Boatswain, an aged woman, stolen in her youth, related the manner of her abduction. She was induced to enter a boat, without suspicion of the design, when her captors rowed away, and confined her on an island in the Straits. She told her treatment, in broken English and expressive pantomime; first spreading forth her hands, as if fastened to the wall; then, with loud cries, gradually becoming fainter, she fell down into a pretended swoon: thus describing the mode and severity of her torture.
These men acquired an extraordinary dominion over the fears of the women, sufficient to induce them to dissemble in the presence of strangers. Backhouse relates, that two girls, Jumbo and Jackey, pretended, while in the company of their masters, either by silence, or feigned anger, to resent the proposal to take them away; but when they were assured that their liberty would be protected, they embraced it with joy.
Jeffreys, whose narrative is tinged with romance, depicts the fondness and contentment of the women in lively colors. Glad to escape the tyranny of their countrymen, they displayed to these amiable white men, warm, though jealous, affection;—whose occasional absence they regretted, and for whose speedy return they invoked some imaginary deity in plaintive melodies! It is not improbable, that they were sensible of kindness, but it is very certain that this was not their ordinary lot. Unanimous testimony permits no doubt that they experienced the severity, which men of low intellect, and of fierce and capricious passions, inflict on women of an inferior race.
The sealers, when they came to the main land, rarely brought their captives: they were in danger of losing them. Their fickleness or revenge, was sometimes fatal: in 1824, a party, engaged in an expedition to entice the girls of a tribe, took with them one who had a half-caste infant, and sent her on shore as a decoy. She returned, bringing promises from her countrywomen to appear the following day; but at that time the blacks descended in great force, and all the adventurers, except one, were slain.
The sealers, by the names they gave the women, which were rarely feminine, and were sometimes ludicrously absurd, indicated the notions which prevailed. However slight their apparent importance, it has been justly observed, they betray the low civilisation of the persons who invented, and the degraded condition of those who bore them.
The intercourse of the stockmen was generally confined to the periods of migration: sometimes with the connivance, at others, the express consent of the men; but the detention was often compulsory. Dr. Ross found a stock-keeper seated on a fallen tree, exhausted with hunger. He had chained a woman to a log, "to tame her;" but she escaped, with his only shirt, which he had bestowed in his fondness. For five hours he had pursued her, catching glimpses of his shirt through the breaks of the forest: at last, this signal disappeared; and having lost his way for two days, he was in danger of starvation.
Such were the various causes, which combined first to alarm, and then to goad into madness, this unhappy people. They were troublesome, and were repelled. Wantonly wounded and shot down, they retaliated. Fresh wrongs produced their kind: at length, every white man was a guerilla, and every black an assassin. The original temper of both parties was changed. Dread detestation and treachery embittered every mind: even the humane yielded to the general sentiment. It became a question, which race should perish, and every man's verdict was in favor of his own.
From this, however, it is not to be inferred, that the natives were originally treacherous and cruel. It was stated by the Aborigines' Committee, in the middle of the conflict, that such dispositions were the substratum of their character, which, though disguised, only waited for time and opportunity. The colonists in general, at last, believed them to delight in blood, by an innate cruelty of temper—to find pleasure in the terrors they excited, and the convulsive agonies of the dying; but the records of mankind are full of such moral transformations. The Indians of America, we are informed by Dr. Dwight, became corrupt, to a degree "enormous and dreadful: full of malice, cruelty, and murders." But he himself, elsewhere remarks, that within his observation white men, commonly sober, moral, and orderly, on joining a mob, lost every one of these qualities; and, in a few hours of excitement, exhibited more vice than he had witnessed for years. The causes of degeneracy are not examined, when its mischief is suffered. Sir George Arthur, in his despatches, asserted that the natives were, and had been, "a most treacherous race,"—a view, which the Committee adopted: these opinions were afterwards greatly modified; nor would it be just to admit their truth, without stronger evidence than history affords. Among the aborigines, some were distinguished for ferocity: such was a woman who led on the Big River tribe, and who was called by Mr. Robinson, the "Amazon." A few were guilty of the crimes imputed to the race: and who were often their oppressors, rather than their avengers.
Though individuals, undoubtedly, displayed the vices imputed, who will condemn the natural disposition of a people for actions committed at lone intervals, by solitary assassins and marauders? The English alone could preserve a record of the past, and after a careful examination no other conclusion is possible, than that whoever continued acts of ferocity and cruelty, the impulse and the example were European.
Dr. Ross, arriving in 1822, passed into the interior, and settled on a farm. He was soon visited by the natives, whom he entertained with the consideration due to their ignorance and their rights. They had kindled their fires in perilous contiguity, and the flames threatened to destroy his crops. He pointed out his danger, and they instantly combined to extinguish the flame, and transferred their temporary resting place to a spot, from which no harm could be communicated. Dr. Ross stood by, and watched their cookery, and they offered him a part of their food: he suffered himself to be amused with their loud merriment, and their evolutions in the water. They often renewed their visits, and rather contributed to his safety, by assisting in the pursuit of white robbers: and even when they inflicted dreadful outrages on many others, provoked by extraordinary mal-treatment, they still preserved their kindness for this amiable man, until they were finally removed to Flinders' Island.