In 1816 it is recorded that the natives now manifested much hostility to the up-country settlers, killing and driving away their cattle. Quarrels arose between them and the stockmen. Spears were exchanged for the more deadly fire of musketry. The natives now entered on a marauding warfare, stopped drays and travellers, and made regular attacks on the huts.
The Lieut.-Governor issued a proclamation in which he enumerated the ill-treatment sometimes received—that they killed the men and pursued the women and compelled them to abandon their children; and still more horrible, the editor of a Wellington paper said, “We have ourselves heard old hands declare it was not an uncommon practice to shoot them to supply food for their dogs.” Females were not only the object of their lust, but of their barbarity. The lash and the chain were the harsh expedients of their savage love.
Lemon, one of the leaders of the bushrangers, fearing that the natives would disclose their retreats, bound them to trees and used them as targets. These barbarities led to numerous murders of the whites; but certainly the whites, even the soldiers, who cast one of their infants into the flames, and a bushranger who cut off the head of a woman’s husband, strung it round her neck, and made her walk before him, could not be exceeded in atrocious conduct by the barbarians.
Mr. Bonwick, in his narrative, sums up the determination of the blacks to scatter blood, conflagration, death, and ruin throughout every district of the Colony; so, for some time afterwards, blood was freely shed, and homesteads were doomed to the flames. Inquests were held daily, and country property had fallen in value to zero.
A Government proclamation was issued in 1826 referring to these outrages, and giving instructions how to act, but all these proclamations, however well intended, were no better than waste paper.
The savage, unrelenting and revengeful, proceeded at once to the great black war. Two natives were captured and executed, while some thirty-seven other persons were sentenced to death at the same Sessions. It was proposed to give up one district to the blacks, but this could not be accomplished, as they could not be confined to any boundary.
Black Tom was catechised by the Governor, and replied, “Your stock-keepers kill plenty of blacks.” “But,” said the Governor, “you kill men, women, and children.” “White men kill plenty of men, women, and piccaninny.” “We want to be friendly to you.” Tom, laughing, said, “All the same as white man, you catch it and kill it.” On hearing the proclamation read, Tom, laughing, said, “You make proclamation, ha, ha, ha! I never see that foolish. When he see dat he can’t read, who tell him?” “You tell him, Tom.” “No, me like see you tell him yourself. He soon spear me.”
Here is a savage not destitute of human intellect. The Governor must have felt that he met more than his match.
As the blacks could not read, as Tom said, sign-boards were put up exhibiting blacks spearing whites, and then hanging to a tree; the Governor, with a cocked-hat and uniform, with soldiers superintending; white women nursing black babies. How the blacks must have been convulsed with fun, and turned all into a corroboree!
Then came the Line scheme. Captain Welsh and Mr. G. A. Robinson succeeded even at this early period in opening friendly intercourse with one tribe, but this seems to have been objected to, as not driving the natives far enough away.