How arrival of the First Fleet affected the Gadigal Peoples
The Empire newspaper ~ 1865 sir henry parkes
Source: The Empire newspaper ~ 1865 ~ Australian Discovery and Colonisation​
Source types: Primary and secondary
Links: See subheadings for each inclusion​
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It is widely believed that Henry Parkes wrote the 1865 series Australian Discovery and Colonisation in The Empire — but there is no definitive, signed proof. Historians generally describe the authorship as "attributed to Henry Parkes" rather than confirmed.
Why historians think Henry Parkes wrote these articles
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Henry Parkes owned and edited The Empire for many years
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He frequently wrote unsigned editorials and historical essays
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Anonymous writing was standard practice
Why it matters
If Parkes wrote the series, it becomes:
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One of the earliest Australian nationalist histories
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A primary source of colonial thinking
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Evidence of how colonisation was framed in the 1860s
Overall importance
The Empire's overview combines history within living memory and the journals and letters of First Fleeters, with the benefit of hindsight and knowledge of former landmarks and their connection / location to the modern landmarks that replaced them.
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"Henry Parkes' The Empire newspaper, 1857 ~ Father of Federation and newspaper man
The Empire newspaper was the springboard for Sir Henry Parkes' entry into politics... Parkes is often considered the 'Father of Federation', but long before Federation, he was heavily involved with radical politics in the colony of New South Wales, supporting universal suffrage, land reform and the end of convict transportation to the colonies... He contributed poems and political articles to newspapers from 1840.
In 1850, Parkes established The Empire with credit from supporters, as a platform for his views and to 'vivify, elevate and direct the political life of the country'. The Empire became known for its caustic leading articles, many of them written by Parkes as editor, and its progressive stance on a range of issues affecting the colony of New South Wales."
From: The Museum of Australian Democracy​
Voyage chapters
Voyage chapters
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"... The aborignes at Sydney Cove at first showed signs of opposition towards the newcomers; but they were quickly pacified by the tact and conciliatory conduct of the Governor. The leading men of the tribe, after their first surprise was over, behaved with a manly frankness, and evinced such an intelligent yet unobtrusive curiosity, as greatly raised them in the estimation of the intending colonists. The historical account of the voyage says:—
"On the arrival of the boats at Port Jackson, a second party of the natives made its appearance near the place of landing. These also were armed with lances, and at first were very vociferous ; but the same gentle means used towards the others easily persuaded them to discard their suspicions, and to accept whatsoever was offered. One man in particular, who appeared to be the chief of this tribe, showed very singular marks both of confidence in his new friends, and of determined resolution. Under the guidance of Governor Phillip, to whom he voluntarily intrusted himself, he went to a part of the beach where the men belonging to the boats were then boiling their meat ; when he approached, the marines, who were drawn up near that place, and saw that by proceeding he should be separated from his companions, who remained with several of the officers at some distance, he stopped, and with great firmness, seemed by words and gestures to threaten revenge if any advantage should be taken of his situation.
"In passing near a point of land in this harbour, the boats were perceived by a number of the natives, twenty of whom waded into the water unarmed, received what was offered them, and examined the boat with a curiosity which impressed a higher idea of them than any former account of their manners had suggested. This confidence, and manly behaviour, induced Governor Phillip, who was highly pleased with it, to give the place the name of Manly Cove. The same people afterwards joined the party at the place where they had landed to dine. They were then armed, two of them with shields and swords, the rest with lances only. The swords [boomerangs] were made of wood, small in the gripe, and apparently less formidable than a good stick. One of these men had a kind of white clay rubbed upon the upper part of his face, so as to have the appearance of a mask. This ornament, if it can be called such, is not common among them, and is probably assumed only on particular occasions, or as a distinction to a few individuals. One woman had been seen on the rocks as the boats passed with her face, neck, and breasts thus painted, and to our people appeared the most disgusting figure imaginable; her own countrymen were perhaps delighted by the beauty of the effect.
"During the preparation for dinner the curiosity of these visitors rendered them very troublesome, but an innocent contrivance altogether removed the inconvenience. Governor Phillip drew a circle round the place where the English were, and without much difficulty made the natives understand that they were not to pass that line ; after which they sat down in perfect quietness. Another proof how tractable these people are, when no insult or injury is offered, and when proper means are employed to influence the simplicity of their minds..."
…This desirable result was facilitated by the quantities of game and fish which, after places for shelter had been erected, were procured by men who were specially employed in shooting and fishing.
The natives, who, at first, and while they considered the colonists to be merely visitors, had been exceedingly peaceful and confiding, after a short time completely altered in their conduct. The knowledge that their white friends intended to remain and to keep possession of their country rendered them at once so suspicious and so shy that after the first few days the utmost difficulty was experienced by the Governor in procuring an interview with them. One circumstance, which rendered these unfortunate people extremely averse to the presence of the whites, was the rapid disappearance, not merely of the kangaroos and other animals on which they had depended for food, but also to a great extent of the fish from the waters of the harbour. That wild animals would quickly abandon a place where fire-arms were frequently discharged, and where the noise of clearing was almost incessant, might have been anticipated ; but that fish should suddenly desert their haunts, appeared at first almost incredible.
That such was the case, however, be the cause what it might, the whites as well as the blacks had soon abundant reason to know. Those who were sent out to shoot and fish, after a time returned almost empty-handed.
The poor aborigines were quickly reduced to a state of starvation, and it is believed that many of them actually perished for want of food during the first few months of the occupation of their country.
Captain Hunter, in his narrative, speaking of the state of things in the month of July, about six months after the arrival of the colonists says :—" Such of the natives as we met, seem to be in a miserable and starving condition. We frequently fall in with families living in the hollow part of the rocks by the sea side, where they eagerly watch every opportunity to provide shell or other fish for their present subsistence. If a bird was shot and thrown to them, they would immediately pluck off the feathers, put it upon the fire without taking out the intestines, and eat the whole ; sometimes they did not pull off the feathers, and if it were a small bird, did not even throw the bones away. The scarcity of fish subjects these poor creatures to great distress."
Of their numbers, no very reliable calculation could be made. Governor Phillip, who always took great interest in their welfare, and who made many attempts to secure their confidence, at first thought that the district around Port Jackson, extending to Botany Bay on the south and Pitt Water on the north, and including a coast line of about twenty-five miles, did not contain more than about fifteen hundred people.
This estimate, however, he afterwards considered to be much too low, for going one day, very quietly and cautiously, to endeavour to procure an interview with some of them, he was able to approach a camp on the coast between Cudgee and Botany un- observed, and he then counted 212 men, besides women and children. At the next bay he counted forty men, and at other places saw so many that he was convinced he had at first much under-estimated their numbers. On the same day, at another place in Botany Bay, he found upwards of a hundred canoes on the beach, although not a single native was to be seen ; the whole tribe having taken alarm, and fled at his approach. In Port Jackson as many as sixty-seven canoes were counted at one time.
These unfortunate people, it should be remembered, were unable to escape their invaders by retreating to other districts, for the limits of the possessions of each tribe or family were defined with almost as much exactness as the boundaries of landed estates in the present day. They had very little notion of individual property in the soil, but tribal or family rights were well understood, and rigidly observed. The district owned by a tribe, when it bordered on the sea shore or on a creek or river, was in some instances very small. On the south shore of Port Jackson there were five dis- tinct tribes, the hunting and fishing grounds of each having their well defined limits, between the South Head and Parra- matta—a distance of less than twenty miles in a straight line. On the north shore of the harbour, all were of one tribe. The people there were superior to the others in their physical development, and spoke a language differing very considerably from that of their neighbours. They called themselves Cammeroy, Kamilroy, or Cumleroy, and were the most southern family or branch of a tribe or series of tribes speaking the same language, and called by the same or slightly varying designations, which are known to have extended, with a few interruptions, seven hundred miles north from Port Jackson, and probably much further.
The other aboriginal tribes, on the south of the harbour and in the interior, do not appear to have had any collective designation. Each family or division of a tribe called itself, and was called by its neighbours, by the name of the particular locality which was its usual place of resort. The native name of Botany Bay was Gwea, and hence the people who lived there were called Gwea-Gal, or, as we should say, Botany-folks. The Cammeroy tribe, or tribes, appear to have exercised great influence on the other aborigines. The doctors, or kiradjis, as those cunning men were called who superintended the ceremonies, healed or pretended to heal the sick, and negotiated peace or war, were almost always of the Cammeroy race. In addition to their physical and mental superiority, they were also vastly superior in numbers to any other tribe. It does not appear that the Cammeroy ever attached the name of any locality to their tribal designation, but called themselves, and were called by the others, simply Cammeroy, wherever they were found.
They were considered by Governor Phillip to be much more open in their conduct, and manly in their bearing towards the whites than the other tribes ; and it was on account of their bold, frank, and courteous behaviour on his first interview with them, that, as has before been mentioned, he bestowed the name of Manly Beach on the spot where that interview took place...
… It will be seen from what is stated above that when the first white settlers arrived the condition of things was so fixed, the state of aboriginal society so rigid, the land so completely occupied and so fully peopled, that any considerable number of colonists could only find room by the destruction of that portion of the native race with whom they were brought into contact, or whose lands their flocks and herds might occupy. The aborigines living on the shores of Port Jackson could not fall back upon those at Parramatta ; the Cammeroy tribe on the shores of Broken Bay could not seek refuge with the Badiagal of the Upper Hawkesbury ; the Gweagal of Botany could not retreat upon the Alowrie-gal of the Five Islands. The tribes whose lands were seized and occupied by the intruding race were doomed to inevitable extinction. There was no room in all the Great South Land for any tribe expelled from its own territory ; and even when not absolutely expelled, the population, although insignificant in numbers as compared with most other countries, pressed so heavily upon the means of existence, that the decrease in the supply of food consequent on the destruction of the wild animals by the white strangers, was fatal in a corresponding degree to those who were dependent upon it.
It has been said, and the assertion is no doubt true to a certain extent, that the bringing together of two races so dissimilar as the Australian aborigines and the people of modern Europe, must of necessity have been followed by the extinction of the inferior race. They were so widely separated in habits, organisation, and mental and physical characteristics that they could not, it is contended, exist together or side by side. If it is meant that such wide diversities of character—men representing such opposite poles of humanity—could not exist together in one community, the assertion is true. But, with all the differences between the two races, if the aborigines had been fewer in number, if they were a people whose institutions had not been crystalised into rigidity, if their presence in the country had been of so recent a date that they had not fully occupied it, and could have fallen back before the more powerful strangers, the occupation of a few spots on the mere fringe of their continent would not in all probability have much interfered with their numbers for some centuries. As it was they were obliged to stand and die.
The tribes were forced into contact with the intruders, because they had no place to fly to—no refuge to which they could retreat ; and when their natural supplies of food were disturbed, diminished, or exhausted, as was quickly the case wherever the white man set his foot, they were driven by starvation to plunder or to begging.
Those who sunk to the latter, who became recipients of the bounty of the stranger in the land which had been their own, formed the most abject and contemptible portion of their race, and managed to drag out a wretched existence for a few years,—objects of ridicule and contempt even to the lowest and most degraded of the intruding whites.
Those of the aborigines who quietly submitted and died—who perished directly or indirectly from want of food—were, however, far more numerous. Governor Hunter's relation of the condition to which they were reduced, and his accounts of the numbers of skeletons and dead bodies found in the caves and under projecting rocks about Port Jackson, at the Hawkesbury, and in the bush, within the first two or three years after the formation of the settlement, are most distressing.
Many of these unfortunates no doubt perished directly from pestilence, for pestilence always accompanies famine ; but it was an absolute want of food which prepared them for the diseases to which they so easily fell victims. Those who neither died from famine nor disease, nor hung about the settlements and became dependent upon the whites for the means of prolonging their miserable lives, took to plunder and robbery as their only resource, and were mostly shot down without hesitation or remorse. They formed the boldest and most warlike section of their race, and their destruction left the more timid and defenceless part of the community entirely at the mercy of the strangers.
...Quick to perceive and ready to seize, rapid to circumvent, prompt to track and to slay the animals on which they depended for food, the Australian blacks, if they could have invented more deadly weapons or achieved a higher skill, would, in all probability, have quickly destroyed the supply of food on which their existence depended, and have rendered a decrease of their numbers from starvation inevitable. Their faculties and the weapons they had invented were sufficient to provide for their simple wants... There was, then, no room for an increase in their numbers, or for an improvement in their skill and appliances. A tribe could not increase beyond the supply of food which its territory was capable of yielding. It could not kill all the animals in its own territory, and then intrude upon its neighbours, for it was hedged round on all sides by boundaries recognised by immemorial custom, and guarded with a vigilance equal to its own.
All social advancement was checked by the impossibility of any considerable number of persons providing themselves with food if they kept together ; or of any number, however small, being able to exist for any great length of time on the same spot...
... He was, in his native wilds, as much superior to the white man as he was the white man's inferior in the marts of commerce or the halls of learning, where the faculties of the latter had been trained for a many generations..."