Aborigines Slaughtered in Australia (#7747)
by Editor on January 29, 2003 at 1:29 PM
Courier Mail
January 25, 2003, Saturday
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 1
HEADLINE: Aborigine slaughter recorded
BYLINE: Tony Koch
A FORMER Queensland police commissioner slaughtered hundreds of
Aborigines,
according to his own hand-written files.
The Courier-Mail found the notes in the State Archives while investigating
claims by historian Keith Windschuttle who released a book last year
denying
claims of widespread slaughter of Tasmanian Aborigines. The personal
re****ts
of Sub-Inspector Frederick Urquhart who rose to become Queensland Police
Commissioner from 1917 to 1921, show Aboriginal men, women and children
were
slaughtered on his orders after the death of a white pastoralist.
He led native police in what is reputedly Australia's biggest massacre of
Aborigines -- the 1884 Battle Mountain attack on Kalkadoon people in
northwest Queensland.
Historian Robert Armstrong in his book The Kalkadoons estimated 600
Aborigines assembled on the crags of Battle Mountain and about 200 were
killed by the carbines of Urquhart's police.
The number of dead is disputed, but historian Professor Geoffrey Blainey
once noted: "A tribe was slaughtered in such numbers that for decades a
hill
was littered with bleached bones of warriors, gins and piccaninnies."
The Urquhart re****ts refer to "dispersal" of Aborigines, a term of the era
for killing.
He wrote: "I gave the order to fire and 30 of the blacks were shot". In
another he described how his group surrounded a "large number" of blacks
and
opened fire. He noted "none escaped".
Courier Mail
January 25, 2003, Saturday
SECTION: FEATURES; Pg. 32
HEADLINE: Dispersal of the facts
BYLINE: Tony Koch
No matter how delicate the language of the time, it's clear the massacre
of
Aborigines was common practice in colonial days, writes news editor, Tony
Koch
'A dispersal was, in fact, a camouflage for indiscriminate killing, rape
and
child-braining' The Queenslander
THE Queensland State Archives file has a rather innocuous reference title,
in script handwriting: "Murder of Mr E. Watson at Pine Tree Station by
Blacks in May 1889. Blacks dispersed by S.I. Urquhart."
It is the personal re****t of Queensland police sub-inspector Frederick
Urquhart to the police commissioner of the time, giving details of his
investigation into Watson's violent death.
A periodical of the same decade, The Queenslander, illuminates the jargon
of
the time. It says: "How many of us understand the euphemistic word
'dispersal'. If it is advisable that, as a colony, we should indulge in
wholesale murder of the (Aboriginal) race, let us have the courage of our
opinions and murder openly and deliberately, calling it murder, not
dispersal. "It was very convenient for native police officers, and for the
European colonisers, to refer to a native police action as a 'dispersal'
with its overtones of politeness and nebulousness.
"A dispersal was, in fact, a camouflage for indiscriminate killing, rape
and
child-braining."
Each of Urquhart's re****ts of the time in this regard used the term
"dispersal" which, it becomes increasingly obvious the more one reads,
does
mean "killing". In other instances he does not bother to be at all
obscure,
using terms such as "execution" and, when surrounding "savages" in the
bush
and opening fire, he subsequently writes that "none escaped".
The recent contretemps among Australian academics who refer to themselves
as
"historians" is centred on a book titled The Fabrication of Aboriginal
History by Keith Windschuttle, in which the author "re-appraises the now
widely accepted story about conflict between colonists and Aborigines in
Australian history".
The dust-jacket of Windschuttle's book declares that in a close
re-examination of the primary sources used by historians, the author
concluded that much of their case is poorly founded, other parts seriously
mistaken and some of it outright fabrication: "The author finds the
British
colonisation of Australia was the least violent of all Europe's encounters
with the New World. It did not meet any organised resistance. Conflict was
s****adic rather than systematic. The claim that the colonists committed
genocide is unsup****ted by the historical evidence."
What is perplexing in the debate is that highly educated people,
presumably
with well-honed skills in research and the time and financial assistance
to
indulge that passion, get side-tracked on esoteric issues of personal
dispute, and argue the actual numbers alleged to have been killed. Is it
any
less significant or appalling if the number of indigenous human beings
slaughtered was 30 instead of 300, or hundreds instead of thousands?
The undeniable fact is that Aboriginal people were shot like animals,
poisoned or "dispersed". It was government policy to condone it. It was
widely practised in Queensland, and sanctioned by the authorities, because
the perpetrators like Urquhart were never questioned. Instead they were
lauded and promoted.
There can be little argument that Frederick Urquhart, who rose to become
the
police commissioner of Queensland and later the administrator (governor)
of
the Northern Territory, was possibly the greatest mass murderer in
Australia's history. And he was proud of it!
What also is obvious is that the "culture" of the time thought it proper
that Aborigines should be exterminated. They were not considered to be
human
beings -- otherwise they would have been afforded the dignity of such
niceties as burial after they were killed. Instead they were left to rot
or
to be shredded by native animals.
IN THE handwritten file on the death of Watson, Urquhart's superior
officer,
Inspector Murray of Cooktown in Cape York, noted: "Mr Urquhart appears to
have done his work completely, and I trust the blacks will be of better
behaviour in future."
There was no inquiry into the indiscriminate slaughter of Aboriginal
people
by Urquhart and his troopers. There was no censure of him -- merely
congratulations on having done a good job. Would Windschuttle consider
that
this falls into his category of "claims that the colonists committed
genocide is unsup****ted by the historical evidence"?
There can be no stronger evidence than the handwritten testimony of the
perpetrator, no more damning evidence that that which flowed from his own
hand, in the same way he so callously dealt out death to Aborigines --
men,
women and children.
Urquhart's re****t on the Watson murder states: "On the 24th I started upon
the tracks of the largest mob taking a gin from York Downs to act as
interpreter. I came up with the trail of them on the afternoon of the 25th
but they were in an area full of water and timber and so many escaped
arrest.
"When they refused to stand they were fired upon. Very little execution
was
done upon this occasion.
"Again taking up the tracks, I caught up with a large mob on the 26th in a
dense fern scrub covering about five acres of ground which I succeeded in
completely surrounding.
"I then parleyed with the blacks, trying to induce them to come out and
give
up the murderers, but without avail. After some time lost in this way the
blacks got together in a body and made a rush to break out on one side of
the scrub, but it was well defended and they were driven back.
"None of the murderers escaped from this scrub, and their identity was
fully
established by Messrs L. Watson and W. Nicholls of Pine Tree to whom they
were well-known, but there were several others missing.
"Again taking up tracks, I came up with the leading lots on the 28th in
three different scrubs in which the work of following them had to be done
on
foot and was successfully so done.
"On no occasion was it possible to bring the blacks to listen to
parleying.
They resist at first with spears and when that fails, break and scatter in
all directions.
"At one of the last scrubs, three of the troopers were narrowly missed by
spears which these blacks throw with uncommon force and precision.
"The punishment that has befallen them has been none too heavy for the
tribe
of ungrateful savages who planned and carried out this attack upon men who
had benefited and fed them as far as their limited resources would allow."
In that re****t, Urquhart referred to "a large mob" surrounded in the fern
scrub -- of whom none escaped.
In another re****t -- his investigation into the murder of James Powell of
Carlton Hills, Cloncurry, by blacks in July 1884 -- Urquhart gives some
insight into the euphemisms he adopts.
His handwritten re****t states: "We dropped into a deep gorge in Gunpowder
Creek and there detected the smoke of a campfire curling upwards. An hour
before sundown I had my troopers in ambush round the camp which was a very
large one -- there being upwards of 150 blacks in it. Trooper Billy,
acting
on my orders, summoned them to surrender in their own language, but they
resisted and as further hesitation would have involved the escape of the
offenders and possibly the destruction of my little party, I gave the
order
to fire.
"Thirty of the blacks were shot. Trooper Larry was knocked down by a
black,
but beyond this I have no casualties to re****t.
"Many blacks escaped, but my detachment was not strong enough to admit to
my
doing more."
There is no mention of stopping any time to bury the bodies of the
Aborigines in any dignified way, but Urquhart re****ted that he immediately
rode to Powell's camp where they discovered his body and buried him in a
marked grave.
Then for the further revenge. "On the morning of the 30th I started on the
tracks of the blacks, and as they had driven the horses and cattle with
them
it was very easy. Between the scene of the murder and the head of the
Wills
River I broke up and dispersed four more large mobs of blacks, one of
which
I was informed by the gins had been watching Mulligan's prospecting camp
on
the Leichhardt for some days with a view to making an attack upon it.
"The trip was a most arduous one and hard tramping on foot amongst
mountains
on a short allowance of rations told considerably of myself and my
troopers.
But I think the blacks have had a caution which will exercise a deterrent
effect upon them for some time to come."
THE covering letter to that re****t, which actually was a confession to
mass
murder, was sent to the office of the police commissioner. It noted that
it
included details of the murder of Powell "by the blacks and the punishment
meted to the murderers by Sub Inspector Urquhart of the Cloncurry Native
Police detachment".
There was no investigation. There was no interrogation of suspects, no
court
case, no defence allowed to be put. The "suspects", and everybody with
them,
were summarily and brutally murdered by Urquhart and his cronies -- and
that
action was explained as the "punishment meted out to the murderers".
Did they even get the murderers? Did they even know who they were?
Apparently the attitude was that if you shot everybody with black skin,
the
chances were the culprit would be among the hundreds killed.
Some of our history is not pleasant, but it achieves nothing for
apologists
like Windschuttle to deny that unsavoury things did occur, and that the
original inhabitants of this country were brutalised and all but wiped out
by the colonisers or their agents -- in many cases police, like mass
murderer sub-inspector Frederick Urquhart.
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