by David Hill
Certainly the Aboriginal population in the area was in the hundreds rather than the thousands. The arrival of a thousand European settlers concentrated on Sydney Harbour was to have a devastating impact on the local environment – causing not only a scarcity of resources but also the introduction of diseases that the Aboriginal people had no immunity to. An outbreak of smallpox wiped out a large number of the local people a year after the settlers arrived.
Each group or tribe had its own language or dialect and was distinguished by its bodily decorations, songs, dances, tools and weapons. It is believed that there was some migration north and south along the coast, which meant that any one group could understand and communicate with another. There was less mixing between the hinterland and the coast. When the Aboriginal Bennelong, who was from the coastal Wangal group, went with a party of settlers twenty-five kilometres west to Parramatta in 1789, he was unable to understand what the locals were saying.
In Governor Phillip’s original written instructions from King George III the settlers had been ordered to develop friendly relations with the Aboriginal people:
You are to endeavour by every possible means to open an intercourse with the natives, and to conciliate their affections, enjoining all our subjects to live in amity and kindness with them. And if any of our subjects shall wantonly destroy them, or give them any unnecessary interruption … it is our will and pleasure that you do cause such offenders to be brought to punishment according to the degree of the offence.7
Phillip had himself written of the importance of good relations with the Aboriginal people in his ‘vision’ of the colony before leaving England:
I think it is a great point gained if I can proceed in this business without having any dispute with the natives, a few of which I shall endeavour to persuade to settle near us and who I mean to furnish with everything that can tend to civilize them, and to give them a high opinion of the new guests.8
Part of this civilisation would require clothing the black man. Within months of arriving Phillip was to write to England seeking food, clothing and blankets for an increasingly desperate colony. At the same time he asked the British Government to send out clothing to cover the Aboriginal people:
Clothing for the natives, if sent out will I daresay be very acceptable to them when they are among us. I should recommend long frock and jackets only, which will equally serve men and women.9
On arrival in New South Wales the governor had given instructions that the Aboriginal people were to be treated in a friendly way. The surgeon George Worgan wrote in his letter of 12–18 June 1788:
The governor gave strict orders, that the natives should not be offended, or molested on any account, and advised that wherever, they were met with, they were to be treated with every mark of friendship. In case of their stealing any thing, mild means were to be used to recover it, but upon no account to fire at them with ball and shot.10
Phillip’s colleagues saw little to justify the respect he wanted shown to the locals. Almost all of them were to record negative views about the Aboriginal people, and when their journals were published back in England they would help shape a European view of the Aboriginal people that would last for the next two centuries.
Surgeon Arthur Bowes Smyth believed they were stupid and lazy, and reflected this attitude in comments in his journal:
Upon our landing seven or eight of the natives came close up to us – They were all provided with lances of a great length pointed with the bone of a sting ray at one end and a piece of oyster shell at the other, grown or rubbed to a fine edge and one of them had a heavy bludgeon which I persuaded him to exchange with me for a looking glass. They were all perfectly naked rather slender, made of a dark black colour, their hair not wooly but short and curly. – Every one had the tooth next the fore tooth in his upper jaw knocked out, and many of them had a piece of stick about the size of a tobacco pipe and six or eight inches in length run through the septum of the nostrils, to which from its great similitude we ludicrously gave the name of a Sprit Sail Yard. They all cut their backs bodies and arms which heal up in large ridges and scars.
They live in miserable wigwams near the water which are nothing more than two or three pieces of the bark of a tree set up sideways against a ridge pole fastened to two upright sticks at each end – they are about two or three feet high, and few amongst them are to be found which are weather proof. Their principal food consists of fish which they in general eat raw – Sometimes they feast upon the kangaroo, but I believe them to be too stupid and indolent a set of people to be able often to catch them: from the appearance of many of the lofty trees we saw, some way up the country having regular steps chopped at about two foot asunder in the bark of the tree quite up to the top where the tree begins to branch out, there is reason to suppose they mount these with large stones where they lie in ambush till some kangaroos come under to graze when they heave the stone upon them and kill them.11
The 37-year-old Bowes Smyth was one of the first who had sailed with the First Fleet to return to England and publish his journal. He was only in New South Wales for four months before he sailed back on the Lady Penrhyn, which returned to England via Lord Howe Island, Tahiti and China.
American seaman Jacob Nagle also provided an early indication of the views of the white settlers about the Aboriginal people:
The natives here are the most miserable on the sea coast I ever saw … They have some huts of bark but when the weather is cool, they generally get on the lee side of the harbour in the caves and hollow rocks and they always carry their fire with them to kindle a small fire at the entrance or otherwise in the middle of the cave. They chiefly live on fish. I have seen them have yellow root but it was so noxious and slimy that I could not bear it in my mouth.12
Not all of the assessments of the Aboriginal people were condescending and dismissive. Watkin Tench acknowledged that the lack of ‘advancement and acquisition’ might support the view that they ‘were the least enlightened and ignorant on earth’, but he argued that on more detailed inspection they ‘possessed acumen, or sharpness of intellect, which bespeaks genius’, citing some of their tools and weapons the manufacture of which ‘display ingenuity’.13
Tench described them as more diminutive and slighter than Europeans, ‘especially about the thighs and legs’ and doubted that any reached the height of six feet. They wore no clothes, did not wash and if they did, it would ‘not render them two degrees less black than an African Colony’.14
They lived in crude huts that ‘consist only of pieces of bark laid together in the form of an oven, open at one end and very low’,15 although long enough for a man to lie full length. They carried lances and stone hatchets and manufactured small fishing nets.
The canoes they used to fish were as crude as their huts, ‘being nothing more than a large piece of bark tied up at both ends by vines’,16 yet they were experts at paddling for miles out into the open sea. Tench noted that they made their fire by ‘attrition’, friction from rubbing wood together, and nearly always they carried a fire in the base of the canoes for the immediate cooking of the fish they caught.17
They cultivated no food and were entirely hunters and gatherers. Tench said that meat was rarely eaten raw, ‘unless pressed by extreme hunger’, but broiled, with their vegetables, on an open fire.18 They used no cooking utensils and were fascinated, as has been mentioned earlier, when they first saw meat cooking in a pot on one of the settlers’ fires.
Their diet was based on fishing, and when fish could not be caught they would collect the oysters and other shellfish around the shores. Tench said they also dug up and ate fern roots and a number of different wild berries.
He observed that the Aboriginal people were often hungry, and to alleviate the sensation of hunger they tied a vine (‘ligature’) tightly around their stomachs. Tench had seen English soldiers do something similar.
When given bread by the Europeans, they chewed it before spitting it out. They liked the salted p
ork and beef they were given, but most would not drink alcohol a second time. Many kept domesticated dingoes.
Tench said the women were distant and reserved and most had the two top joints of the little finger of their left hand cut off.
The men typically had one of their incisor teeth ceremonially removed, and Tench witnessed it being done to a number of them:
The tooth to be taken out is loosened by the gum being scarified on both sides with a sharp shell. The end of a stick is then applied to the tooth, which is struck gently several times with a stone, until it becomes easily moveable, when the ‘coup de grace’ is given by a smart stroke. Notwithstanding these precautions, I have seen a considerable degree of swelling and inflammation follows the extraction … It is seldom performed on those who are under sixteen years old.19
The initial contact between the Europeans and the Aboriginal people had been friendly enough. When the fleet landed in Botany Bay, and a few days later in Sydney Cove, the exchanges between them were quite amicable as the English handed out ribbons and trinkets as gestures of friendship. Before the fleet had left Portsmouth, ‘toys, ribbons and other trifling articles’ were put on board the ships as presents for the Aboriginal people ‘in order to preserve their friendship that they will live peaceably with the new settlers’.20
After only a few months, however, attacks against the settlers were on the rise. Surgeon John White believed that this was in retaliation for the stealing of food and for assaults on the Aboriginal people:
30th [May 1788]. Captain Campbell of the marines, who had been up the harbour to procure some rushes for thatch, brought to the hospital the bodies of William Okey and Samuel Davis, two rush-cutters, whom he had found murdered by the natives in a shocking manner. Okey was transfixed through the breast with one of their spears, which with great difficulty and force was pulled out. He had two other spears sticking in him to a depth, which must have proved mortal. His skull was divided and comminuted so much that his brains easily found a passage through. His eyes were out, but these might have been picked away by birds. Davis was a youth, and had only some trifling marks of violence about him. This lad could not have been many hours dead, for when Captain Campbell found him, which was among some mangrove-trees, and at a considerable distance from the place where the other man lay, he was not stiff nor very cold; nor was he perfectly so when brought to the hospital. From these circumstances we have been led to think that while they were dispatching Okey he had crept to the trees among which he was found, and that fear, united with the cold and wet, in a great degree contributed to his death. What was the motive or cause of this melancholy catastrophe we have not been able to discover, but from the civility shewn on all occasions to the officers by the natives, whenever any of them were met, I am strongly inclined to think that they must have been provoked and injured by the convicts.21
By July Captain Tench recorded that the Aboriginal people wanted little to do with the white man. ‘They seemed studiously to avoid us,’ he said, ‘either from jealousy, or hatred.’22
Eight months after arriving Phillip confessed that the white men knew little of the Aboriginal people and the Aboriginal people resented the white man’s presence. He wrote to tell Lord Sydney of an idea he had for the two groups to learn more about each other:
I am sorry to have been so long without knowing more of these people but I am unwilling to use any force and hope this summer to persuade a family to live with us, unless they attempt to burn our crops, of which I am apprehensive, for they certainly are not pleased with our remaining among them, as they see we deprive them of fish, which is almost their only support; but if they set fire to the corn, necessity will oblige me to drive them to a greater distance, though I can assure your Lordship that I shall never do it but with the greatest reluctance and from absolute necessity.23
A month later Phillip was to admit that he thought it unlikely that an Aboriginal family could be persuaded to voluntarily join the white community and it might be necessary to use force to bring them over:
I now doubt whether it will be possible to get any of these people to remain with us, in order to get their language without using force; they see no advantage that can arise from us that may make amends for the loss of that part of the harbour in which we occasionally employ the boats for fishing.24
Shortly after he was to note a further deterioration in relations, when he recorded that the locals were increasingly avoiding the settlers. He thought it was because the convicts had been stealing from them, and they in turn had been attacking and murdering stragglers from the camp:
The natives now avoid us more than they did when we first landed and which I impute to the robberies committed on them by the convicts, who steel their spears and fizgigs, which they frequently leave in their huts when they go a fishing and which the people belonging to the transports purchase … This the natives revenge by attacking any stragglers they meet and one of the convicts has been killed since the Sirius sailed.25
On New Year’s Eve of the first year of settlement and, in Tench’s words, ‘tired of this state of petty warfare and endless uncertainty’,26 Phillip decided that some of the Aboriginal people should be abducted and brought into the white settlement. He believed that bringing them into the settlement would help bridge the language and cultural gap and provide the British with someone who could help communicate with the natives.
Lieutenants Henry Ball and George Johnston of the marines were duly ordered to go down to the north side of the harbour to bring back as many Aboriginal people as possible. Watkin Tench described the expedition:
Pursuant to his resolution, the governor on the 31st of December sent two boats, under the command of Lieutenant Ball of the Supply, and Lieutenant George Johnston of the marines, down the harbour, with directions to those officers to seize and carry off some of the natives. The boats proceeded to Manly Cove, where several Indians were seen standing on the beach, who were enticed by courteous behaviour and a few presents to enter into conversation. A proper opportunity being presented, our people rushed in among them, and seized two men: the rest fled; but the cries of the captives soon brought them back, with many others, to their rescue: and so desperate were their struggles, that, in spite of every effort on our side, only one of them was secured; the other effected his escape. The boats put off without delay; and an attack from the shore immediately commenced; they threw spears, stones, firebrands, and whatever else presented itself, at the boats; nor did they retreat, agreeable to their former custom, until many musquets were fired over them.27
When they reached Sydney, the captive caused a lot of excitement when he was brought out of the boat tied up: ‘the clamorous crowds flocked around him’. After many ‘unsuccessful attempts were made to learn his name’,28 he was called Manly by the Europeans, after the name of the beach where he was abducted. Watkin Tench, who helped bath, dress and feed Manly, recorded the episode in considerable detail:
He appeared to be about 30 years old, not tall but robustly made … His hair was closely cut, his head combed and his beard shaved.
To prevent his escape, a handcuff with a rope attached to it was fastened around his left wrist, which at first highly delighted him; he called it Ben-gad-ee (or ornament), but his delight turned to rage and hatred when he discovered its use.29
The next morning, New Year’s Day, Manly was taken in a boat down the harbour ‘to convince his countrymen that he had received no injury from us’.30 When they reached Manly, a number of his people came to talk to him and asked why he didn’t jump from the boat there and then. ‘He only sighed, and pointed to the fetter on his leg, by which he was bound.’
Perhaps to compensate for his abduction, Manly was given much more to eat than the standard ration:
He dined at the side table at the Governors and ate heartily of fish and ducks, which he first cooled. Bread and salt meat he smelled at but would not taste, our liquors he treated in the same manner and could drink nothing but water.31
One of the principal effects which we had supposed the seizure and captivity of Arabanoo would produce, seemed as yet as great a distance as ever; the natives neither manifested signs of increased hostility on his account, or ask any explanation … of their countryman who was in our possession.32
Two months later sixteen convicts left their work at the brick kiln and marched to Botany Bay to steal fishing tackle and spears from the locals. They were attacked. One of the convicts was killed and seven were wounded. Phillip ordered that the survivors be ‘severely flogged’ in the hope that it would impress the Aboriginal people. However, the gesture backfired, wrote Tench, as the locals were appalled at the sight of the Europeans savagely flogging their own people: ‘Arabanoo was present at the infliction of the punishment; and was made to comprehend the cause and necessity of it; but he displayed on the occasion symptoms of disgust and terror only.’33
In April 1789, more than a year after the arrival of the First Fleet, there was an outbreak of smallpox that was to kill a large number of the Aboriginal people. Some estimates suggest that as much as half the local population died.34 Only one European perished, a sailor from the Supply.
The first symptoms of smallpox included a fever, headaches, joint and muscle pain and a feeling of exhaustion followed by frequent vomiting. After several days of shivering a rash appeared and developed into skin blisters. In severe cases the blisters became so dense as to coalesce into giant pustules. If the individual survived, the pustules left scars or ‘pocks’, which resulted in the disease being called the ‘speckled monster’ in the eighteenth century. Death was slow, painful and probably came as a relief for those who were severely affected. Those who were weaker, the very young and the very old died swiftly.