Martial law (November 1828)

Violence escalated from August to October 1828, with the Oyster Bay, Big River, Ben Lomond and Northern peoples launching raids on stock huts during which 15 colonists were killed in 39 attacks. From early October, Oyster Bay warriors also began killing white women and children. On 1 November, Arthur declared martial law against the Aboriginal people in the settled districts, who were now "open enemies of the King". Arthur's move was effectively a declaration of war. Soldiers were authorised to arrest any Aboriginal person in the settled districts without warrant and to shoot those who resisted.^[57][58] However, the proclamation also stated:

... that the actual use of arms be in no case resorted to, if the Natives can by other means be induced or compelled to retire into the places and portions of this Island herein before excepted from the operation of Martial Law; that bloodshed be checked, as much as possible; that any Tribes which may surrender themselves up, shall be treated with every degree of humanity; and that defenceless women and children be invariably spared.^[52]

Martial law would remain in force for more than three years, the longest period in Australian history.^[57] Although the proclamation authorised only the military to shoot Aboriginal people in the settled districts on sight, in practice other colonists did so with impunity.^[59][60] Only one colonist was ever prosecuted for killing an Aboriginal person.^[61]

About 500 Aboriginal people from five clan groups were still operating in the settled districts when martial law was declared and Arthur's first action was to encourage civilian parties to capture them. On 7 November, a party operating from Richmond captured Umarrah — a leader of the North Midlands nation — and four others including his wife and a child. Umarrah remained defiant and was jailed for over a year.^[62]

Arthur established military patrols from the 39th, 40th and 63rd Regiments that scoured the settled districts for Aboriginal people, whom they should capture or shoot. By March 1829, about 400 troops were deployed in the settled districts and about 200 soldiers patrolled the area in 23 parties of eight to 10 men. Patrols usually included convict police who were familiar with the area and sometimes included Aboriginal guides from outside the settled areas. Settlers also formed patrols whose official role was to capture Aboriginal people.^[63]

The main tactic of the military and settler patrols was to execute dawn raids on Aboriginal camps and there are many reported massacres of six or more Aboriginal people in these raids. The patrols reportedly killed 60 Aboriginal people and captured from 20 to 30 in the two years from November 1828. Ryan, however, estimates the Aboriginal death toll was at least 200 by March 1830.^[64][65]

In the first six months of 1829, the Oyster Bay people killed eight convict workers in the Pitt Water district. This was followed by a lull in fighting before a wave of attacks in the spring and summer. Overall, 33 colonists were kill in 1829 compared with 27 the previous year.^[66][67]

In mid-1829 Arthur estimated that there were 2,000 Aboriginal people in the colony. Other estimates by the colonists ranged from 500 to 5,000. Settlers reported that the Oyster Bay people were moving in considerably smaller groups, but sightings of the Big River people in groups of 100 or more continued. It is likely that the massacres, privation and a falling birth rate had reduced the Aboriginal population to under 1,000 and that less than 300 remained in southeastern Tasmania.^[68][69]

Arthur also pursued conciliation. In March 1829, he established an Aboriginal mission on Bruny Island in the hope it would attract Aboriginal people from the settled districts. He also commissioned "proclamation boards" with drawings meant to show Aboriginal people the benefits of living peacefully with the colonists under an ideal British justice in which whites would be hanged for killing blacks and blacks hanged for killing whites.^[70]

Violence, however, did not abate. There were 60 Aboriginal attacks on colonists from November 1829 to March 1830, most of them in the Clyde, Oatlands and Richmond police districts. Settlers reported arson attacks on buildings and crops which threatened the viability of their farms. In late 1829, one police magistrate informed Arthur that he needed three times his allocation of soldiers to protect local settlers. In February 1830, settlers and the press launched a campaign for increased military protection on the frontier and the removal of hostile tribes to the Bass Strait islands.^[71][72]

The predominant mood among colonists on the frontier was fear and panic mixed with anger and a desire for revenge. Although by the end of 1829 the number of Aboriginal people in the war zone had greatly diminished, this was not widely known and the threat that the remaining hostile Aboriginal groups posed to frontier farms was real.^[73]

in November 1829, Arthur established an Aborigines Committee to inquire into the causes of the Aboriginal violence and make policy recommendations. The following February, he introduced a bounty of £5 for every captured Aboriginal adult and £2 for each child. He also sought the help of other colonies in increasing the military presence in Van Diemen's Land but without success.^[71]

The Aborigines Committee

In March 1830, Arthur appointed Anglican Archdeacon William Broughton as chairman of the seven-man Aborigines Committee inquiring into the conflict. Since the declaration of martial law in November 1828 there had been 120 Aboriginal attacks on colonists, resulting in about 50 colonists dead and over 60 wounded.^[74] The inquiry was conducted in the context of a further escalation in hostilities: in February there were 30 separate incidents in which seven Europeans were killed.^[75]

Among submissions it received were suggestions to set up decoy huts containing poisoned flour and sugar, that Aboriginal people be rooted out with bloodhounds and that Māori warriors be brought to Tasmania to capture the Aboriginal people for removal to New Zealand as slaves. Settlers and soldiers gave evidence of killings and atrocities on both sides, but the committee was also told that despite the attacks, some settlers believed very few Aboriginal people now remained in the settled districts.^[76]

In its report, published in March 1830, the committee stated that the Aboriginal people had lost their sense of superiority of white men, no longer feared British guns, and were now on a systematic plan of attacking the colonists and their possessions. The committee's report supported the bounty system, recommended more mounted police, and urged settlers to remain well armed and alert.^[77][78]

Arthur forwarded their report to Secretary of State for War and the Colonies Sir George Murray, blaming convicts for mistreating the Aboriginal people but adding, "it is increasingly apparent the Aboriginal natives of this colony are, and have ever been, a most treacherous race; and that the kindness and humanity which they have always experienced from the free settlers has not tended to civilize them to any degree."^[75] Murray stated in response that the Aboriginal people could become extinct in the near future and that any British conduct with that aim would "leave an indelible stain upon the character of the British Government."^[79]

Arthur accepted most of the committee's recommendations but only deployed a small number of additional mounted police due to the expense and a shortage of horses in the colony. He also advised London that an increase in the convict population in remote frontier areas would help protect settlers and asked that all convict transport ships be diverted to Van Diemen's Land.^[80][81]

The war continued. In April, the military and colonists killed at least 12 Big River and Pallittorre people in separate encounters.^[42] From April to early August, there were 22 Aboriginal attacks in the Clyde district in which three colonists were killed and nine wounded. Arthur, however, had heard that two of his emissaries, George Augustus Robinson and Captain Welsh, had established friendly contacts with Aboriginal groups outside the settled districts. On 19 August, he issued a notice informing settlers of this success and advising them not to harm or capture any non-hostile Aboriginal person in search of food. He also warned settlers that the bounty would not be paid to colonists who captured friendly Aboriginal people and that anyone killing them would be prosecuted.^[82]

Following the killing of a prominent settler on 22 August, a group of settlers wrote to Arthur protesting against his change in policy. The Aborigines Committee and Executive Council also advised him that stronger measures were required to subdue the hostile Oyster Bay and Big River nations.^[83] In response, Arthur extended martial law to the whole of Van Diemen's Land on 1 October.^[84] He also ordered every able-bodied male colonist to assemble on 7 October at one of seven designated places to join a massive drive to sweep the hostile Aboriginal people from the settled districts in a military campaign which became known as the Black Line.^[83][85] The news was greeted enthusiastically by the colonist press. The Hobart Town Courier said that it doubted settlers would need persuading "to accomplish the one grand and glorious object now before them".^[86]

Northwestern conflict

The Aboriginal people of northwestern Tasmania had sporadic and sometimes violent encounters with the British before the region was colonised in 1826. The colonists were servants of the Van Diemen's Land Company which had been granted land for grazing sheep and cattle. An escalating cycle of violence broke out in 1827 after company shepherds killed an Aboriginal man and abducted Aboriginal women for sex. A shepherd was speared and more than 100 sheep killed in retribution, and colonists responded with a dawn attack on an Aboriginal campsite, killing 12. The conflict led to the Cape Grim massacre of 10 February 1828 in which shepherds armed with muskets ambushed up to 30 Aboriginal people as they collected shellfish at the foot of a cliff.^[87][88]

On 21 August 1829, four company servants killed an Aboriginal woman at Emu Bay, near present-day Burnie. An investigation was launched but no one was prosecuted. Three company men were fatally speared in July and October 1831 and there were heavy losses inflicted on sheep and oxen. There were 16 recorded acts of violence against Aboriginal people in the conflict, but the number of Aboriginal deaths is unknown. Company employees stated that they believed killing Aboriginal people was justified to protect livestock.^[88][87]

The population of the northwestern clans fell from an estimated 400-700 at the time of colonisation to about 100 by 1835. The population of the neighbouring northern Aboriginal people fell from 400 in 1826 to fewer than 60 by mid-1830. Violence in the northwest ceased in 1834 but resumed between September 1839 and February 1842 when Aboriginal people made at least 18 attacks on company men and property.^[87][89][88]

Military strategy and tactics

Aboriginal warriors conducted a guerrilla war against the British.^[90][91] They mostly used three weapons: spears, rocks and waddies. They almost always attacked during the day in war parties of 10 to 20 men. Although they favoured ambushes and hit-and-run raids against isolated shepherds and settler huts, sieges of huts for up to a day were not uncommon. Warriors often lit fires or used women to lure colonists out of their huts and into an ambush. They quickly learned that muskets could only be fired about once every 30 seconds, so they often encouraged colonists to fire then closed in for an attack. War parties would sometimes divide into separate diversionary and main attack groups and then disperse after an attack to make pursuit more difficult. Attacks on livestock and arson of buildings and crops were also common but were not used systematically as a major war strategy.^[92]

The main British military response involved official pursuit parties and roving parties. Pursuit parties mostly consisted of soldiers and convicts whose task was to track down Aboriginal groups presumed to be responsible for a particular attack. They were usually in the field for 12 to 48 hours. Roving parties were groups of soldiers, convicts and authorised civilians who patrolled the frontier for 12 to 18 days at a time with the aim of dispersing hostile Aboriginal groups. The main tactic of the official parties was to attack at night after campfires had revealed the position of the Aboriginal groups. Although their instructions were to capture hostile Aboriginal people where possible, in practice a successful ambush of a campsite almost always led to lethal violence. The main weapons used in ambushes were the Brown Bess musket, bayonets and clubs.^[93]

Vigilante groups mainly consisted of convicts but settlers and their employees were often involved. They generally used the same weapons and tactics as the official parties but probably inflicted more deaths on Aboriginal groups.^[94]

Surrender in the settled districts

Following the Black Line campaign, there were probably only about 100 hostile Aboriginal people in the settled districts, although the colonists believed the figure was at least 500. Hopes of peace rose over the summer of 1830-31 as Aboriginal attacks fell to a low level. The Colonial Times newspaper speculated that their enemy had either been wiped out or frightened into inaction. However, there was a new wave of attacks in late January and March in which several colonists were killed, and many men on the frontier refused to go out to work.^[103]

In February 1831, the Aborigines Committee issued a report recommending that settlers should remain vigilant and that parties of armed men should be stationed in the most remote stock huts. In response, up to 150 stock huts were turned into ambush locations, military posts were established on native migratory routes and new barracks were built at Spring Bay, Richmond and Break O'Day Plains. There was an increased military presence at farms, and military parties of 50 to 90 men sometimes went out in pursuit of hostile Aboriginal groups.^[104]

The committee, however, also endorsed the government's attempts to conciliate the hostile Aboriginal clans. In March 1829, George Augustus Robinson had been appointed the head of the Aboriginal Mission on Bruny Island where about 20 survivors of the southeastern Aboriginal people were accommodated. From January to September 1830, Robinson and 19 Aboriginal negotiators had carried out a "Friendly Mission" to establish contacts with the Aboriginal clans of southwestern, western and northwestern Tasmania. In October that year, he reported to Arthur that his mission had been a partial success and the governor authorised him to seek conciliation with the northeastern clans.^[105]

By January 1831, Robinson's party had contacted more than fifty Aboriginal people and had moved them temporarily to Swan Island in Bass Strait. Those moved to the island included the resistance leader Mannalargenna, whose group had killed a number of colonists.^[106] In February, Arthur appointed Robinson to head an Aboriginal Establishment on the Furneaux Islands and authorised him to negotiate the surrender of the remaining Big River and Oyster Bay people. In March, the 53 Aboriginal Tasmanians under Robinson's care were transferred to a settlement on Gun Carriage Island (now Vansittart Island).^[107][108]

In June, Robinson and a party of Aboriginal negotiators set off to locate a resistance group led by Umarrah which had conducted a series of raids killing several colonists.^[109] The public mood, however, swung further against Arthur's conciliatory approach after an Aboriginal group led by Montpelliatta conducted further raids in the Great Western Tiers culminating in the death of two prominent settlers in August. The Launceston Advertiser declared that only "utter annihilation" could subdue the Aboriginal people.^[110]

Several weeks later, an Aboriginal group robbed huts at Great Swansea and, in late October, 100 armed settlers formed a cordon across the narrow part of Freycinet Peninsula in an attempt to capture several dozen Aboriginal people who had entered the peninsula. The cordon was abandoned four days later after the Aboriginal people slipped through and escaped at night.^[110]

Robinson's efforts at conciliation were more successful. In September, he and Mannalargenna persuaded Umarrah and his group to suspend hostilities. The following month, Robinson and Mannalargenna met Arthur to discuss the terms of a surrender. Robinson, Mannalargenna and Umarrah then set off for the interior to locate and negotiate with the remaining hostile Big River and Oyster Bay groups. On 31 December, they made contact with a party of 26 Big River and Oyster Bay people led by Montpelliatta and Tongerlongeter. Umarrah's wife, Woolaytopinnyer, persuaded them to surrender.^[111]

Robinson led the 26 Aboriginal people to Hobart where they surrendered to governor Arthur on January 7, 1832. Ten days later, the groups led by Montpelliatta, Tongerlongeter and Umarrah were sent to Flinders island where the Aboriginal Establishment had been relocated the previous November.^[112][113]

The December surrender effectively ended the Black War, and martial law was revoked in January 1832.^[5] There had been 70 Aboriginal attacks on colonists in 1831, in which 33 colonists were killed or wounded.^[114][115] But the number of attacks had been well below the 250 recorded in 1830, and it was now clear that the remnants of the hostile Aboriginal clans had been exhausted, hungry and desperate throughout 1831.^[116]

There were no further reports of Aboriginal attacks in the eastern settled districts from December 1831, although isolated acts of violence continued in the north until 1834 and in the northwest until 1842. The death toll from 1832 to 1834 was ten colonists and 40 Aboriginal people.^[117][5]

Removal of western Aboriginal nations

Arthur authorised Robinson to negotiate the surrender of the remaining southwestern and western Aboriginal clans and their removal to Flinders Island, believing that this would be the only way of saving them from extermination at the hands of settlers while providing them with the benefits of British civilisation and Christianity. In February 1832, Robinson and his Aboriginal negotiators embarked on the first of several expeditions to the west and north-west of Tasmania. His party persuaded several small groups to seek refuge on Flinders Island, warning them that they faced violent hostility without protection.^[118][119]

However, after a hostile encounter with a group of 29 Tarkiner people at Arthur River in September, Robinson resolved to use force if necessary to secure the removal of the remaining Aboriginal people. Hunter Island, at Tasmania's northwestern tip, and penal stations in Macquarie Harbour, on the western coast, were used to hold captured Aboriginal people until their transfer to Flinders Island, but many succumbed quickly to disease and the mortality rate reached 75 percent.^[120][121]

Aftermath

By early 1835 almost 300 people had surrendered to Robinson,^[119] who reported to the colonial secretary that the entire Aboriginal population had been removed to Flinders Island. However, a family was discovered near Cradle Mountain in 1836 and they eventually surrendered in 1842. Aboriginal women also continued to live with sealers on the Bass Strait islands and small Aboriginal groups remained in the Great Western Tiers.^[122]

In February 1833, the Aboriginal Establishment was moved to a more suitable location on Flinders Island and renamed Wybalenna. Children attended school, men were expected to work in the garden, build roads, erect fences and shear sheep, while women were required to cook, wash clothes, sew and attend evening school. All were expected to attend Scripture classes and wear European clothes and many were given European names. However, convicts were assigned to do most of the labour and the Aboriginal people were free to roam the island where they hunted and gathered food and performed traditional ceremonies.^[123] Despite the presence of a resident doctor, a high rate of respiratory disease cut the population from about 220 in 1833 to 46 in 1847.^[124]

Deaths

Historians acknowledge that recorded killings in the Black War are minimum figures because most killings of Aboriginal people went unreported.^[125] Nevertheless, Clements concludes that even if only reported deaths are considered, annual deaths per head of population were over 600 per 10,000, making the Black War one of the deadliest in history.^[126]

Ryan, based on a contemporary newspaper estimate, states that there were 1,200 Aboriginal people in the settled districts in 1826. She estimates that 838 Aboriginal people were killed in eastern Tasmania from November 1823 to January 1832 and that 40 more were killed in the following period to August 1834.^[127]

Clements states that the recorded Aboriginal death toll in the conflict was 260.^[126] He estimates, however, that only 100 Aboriginal people survived the eastern conflict from a pre-war population of 1,000, and he therefore concludes that 900 died from 1824 to 1831. He surmises that about one-third may have died through internecine conflict, disease and natural deaths, leaving an estimated 600 deaths from frontier violence. However, he states: "The true figure might be as low as 400 or as high as 1,000."^[128] Johnson and McFarlane argue that at least 400 Aboriginal deaths in the northwestern conflict should be added to this figure, giving over 1,000 Aboriginal deaths in the conflict across Tasmania.^[129]

Ryan states that there were 191 recorded deaths of colonists in the conflict from November 1823 to January 1834, and another 10 deaths after this.^[127] Clements, who studied a wider range of sources, states that there were 450 casualties among colonists, including 219 recorded deaths, in the eastern conflict from 1824 to 1831. However, the number killed or wounded was probably under-reported due to administrative inefficiency and because the colonists did not want to discourage British investment in, and emigration to, the colony.^[130]

Aboriginal population decline

Estimates of Tasmania's Aboriginal population in 1803, the year of British settlement, range from 3,000 to 7,000. Lydall Ryan, citing studies by N.J.B Plomley, Rhys Jones, Colin Pardoe and Harry Lourandos, reaches a figure of 7,000 spread throughout the island's nine nations.^[131] Nicholas Clements, however, also citing Plomley, Jones and others, estimates the population at 3,000 to 4,000.^[132] Johnson and McFarlane state that the consensus figure is 4,500 to 5,000.^[133]

Historians also disagree over the extent and causes of Aboriginal population decline before the Black War. Ryan argues that the population of some clans near the two main British settlements probably declined from 1803 to 1807 due to settler violence, although other clans possibly prospered from the introduction of hunting dogs.^[134] She states that by 1819 the Aboriginal and British population reached parity with about 5,000 of each, although among the colonists men outnumbered women four to one. At that stage both population groups enjoyed good health, with infectious diseases not taking hold until the late 1820s. She therefore concludes that settler violence was the main cause of Aboriginal population decline before the Black War.^[135]

Clements, however, believes that frontier violence does not explain population decline in the first 20 years of British settlement as there were few colonists in the interior. He argues that reduced fertility caused by venereal diseases was probably a significant cause of early population decline. He also states that although the health of the Aboriginal population was generally good, at least one southern Aboriginal clan was decimated by other introduced diseases before the Black War.^[136]

Boyce also argues that the impact of violence and disease on the Aboriginal population was moderate up to 1816 and that there is no evidence of low numbers of children and elderly people nor critically low numbers of women.^[137] Johnson and McFarlane, however, argue that kidnapping of Aboriginal women by sealers was a key factor in the population decline of Aboriginal clans in the northern and southern coastal regions.^[138]

Conflict and depopulation

Writing in 2002, Keith Windschuttle argued that the Aboriginal population in 1803 was only about 2,000, that only 118 Aboriginal people were killed in the conflict with British settlers, and that the conflict was an outbreak of criminality rather than a war.^{[139][140][141]} His arguments have been challenged by numerous authors including James Boyce,^[142] Henry Reynolds,^[143] Lyndall Ryan^[140] and Nicholas Clements^[144] who conclude that the conflict was an Aboriginal war of liberation in which 600 to 900 Aboriginal Tasmanians were killed.

Geoffrey Blainey and Josephine Flood argue that although Aboriginal deaths in the conflict were devastating, the major cause of Aboriginal depopulation was disease.^[145][146] Ryan and Boyce, however, argue that the Aboriginal death rate from disease was low before 1820 and that Aboriginal Tasmanians were more likely to die from disease after they had surrendered to the British.^[147][148]

Academic discussion of genocide

The near-destruction of Tasmania's Aboriginal population^[149] has been described as an act of genocide by historians and genocide scholars including Robert Hughes, James Boyce, Lyndall Ryan, Tom Lawson, Mohamed Adhikari, Benjamin Madley, Ashley Riley Sousa, Rebe Taylor, and Tony Barta.^[150][151] The author of the concept of genocide, Raphael Lemkin, considered Tasmania the site of one of the world's clear cases of genocide^[152] and Hughes has described the loss of Aboriginal Tasmanians as "the only true genocide in English colonial history".^[153] However, other historians – including Henry Reynolds, Richard Broome, and Nicholas Clements – do not agree that the colonial authorities pursued a policy of destroying the Indigenous population, although they do acknowledge that some settlers supported extermination.^[154][155]

Boyce has claimed that the April 1828 "Proclamation Separating the Aborigines from the White Inhabitants" sanctioned force against Aboriginal people "for no other reason than that they were Aboriginal". However, as Reynolds, Broome and Clements point out, there was open warfare at the time.^[154][155] Boyce describes the decision to remove all Aboriginal Tasmanians after 1832—by which time they had given up their fight against white colonists—as an extreme policy position. He concludes: "The colonial government from 1832 to 1838 ethnically cleansed the western half of Van Diemen's Land and then callously left the exiled people to their fate."^[156]

As early as 1852 John West's History of Tasmania portrayed the obliteration of Tasmania's Aboriginal people as an example of "systematic massacre"^[157] and in the 1979 High Court case of Coe v Commonwealth of Australia, judge Lionel Murphy observed that Aboriginal people did not give up their land peacefully and that they were killed or forcibly removed from their land "in what amounted to attempted (and in Tasmania almost complete) genocide".^[158]

Historian Henry Reynolds says that there was a widespread call from settlers during the frontier wars for the "extirpation" or "extermination" of the Aboriginal people.^[159] But he has contended that the British government acted as a source of restraint on settlers' actions. Reynolds says there is no evidence the British government deliberately planned the wholesale destruction of indigenous Tasmanians—a November 1830 letter to Arthur by Sir George Murray warned that the extinction of the race would leave "an indelible stain upon the character of the British Government"^[79]—and therefore what eventuated does not meet the definition of genocide codified in the 1948 United Nations convention. He says that Arthur was determined to defeat the Aboriginal people and take their land, but believes that there is little evidence that he had aims beyond that objective and wished to destroy the Tasmanian race.^[160] In contrast to Reynolds' argument, historian Lyndall Ryan, based on a sample of massacres taking place in the Meander River region in June 1827, concludes that massacres of Aboriginal Tasmanians by white settlers were likely part of an organised process and were sanctioned by government authorities.^[161]

Clements accepts Reynolds' argument but also exonerates the colonists themselves of the charge of genocide. He says that, unlike genocidal determinations by Nazis against Jews in World War II, Hutus against Tutsis in Rwanda and Ottomans against Armenians in present-day Turkey which were carried out for ideological reasons, Tasmanian settlers participated in violence largely out of revenge and self-preservation. He adds: "Even those who were motivated by sex or morbid thrillseeking lacked any ideological impetus to exterminate the natives." He also argues that while genocides are inflicted on defeated, captive or otherwise vulnerable minorities, Tasmanian natives appeared as a "capable and terrifying enemy" to colonists and were killed in the context of a war in which both sides killed noncombatants.^[162]

Lawson, in a critique of Reynolds' stand, argues that genocide was the inevitable outcome of a set of British policies to colonise Van Diemen's Land.^[163] He says that the British government endorsed the use of partitioning and "absolute force" against Tasmanians, approved Robinson's "Friendly Mission" and colluded in transforming that mission into a campaign of ethnic cleansing from 1832. He says that once on Flinders Island, the indigenous peoples were taught to both farm land like Europeans and worship God like Europeans and concludes: "The campaign of transformation enacted on Flinders Island amounted to cultural genocide."^[164]

Writing in 2023, historian Rebe Taylor points to the arguments of Windschuttle as being a minority opinion among historians who generally accept the Black War as a case of genocide.^[165]