25 Apr 1865 - AUSTRALIAN DISCOVERY AND COLONISATION - Trove

"... 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..."

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28 Jul 1865 - AUSTRALIAN DISCOVERY AND COLONISATION - Trove

… 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..."