The aborigines of Tasmania / by H. Ling Roth ; assisted by Marion E. Butler and Jas. Backhouse Walker ; with a chapter on the osteology by J.G. Garson.

Henry Ling Roth

Date:: 1899

Credit: The aborigines of Tasmania / by H. Ling Roth ; assisted by Marion E. Butler and Jas. Backhouse Walker ; with a chapter on the osteology by J.G. Garson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

120/402 page 80

$to have killed the whole of the party except the women. But for him- self was reserved a special fate, namely, the mutilation and burning of his body, ‘and my ashes,’ he says, ‘made into Ray-dee or Num-re-mur- he-kee,’ i.e., amulets to be worn by the natives’” (Calder, Wars, p. 70). The natives invariably run away if one man be shot; an instance of this happened at the Coal River; the body was left, but a wounded man was taken away (Hobbs, p. 50). In then mode of warfare, “Parties in pursuit can only come upon them in the morning by watching their smokes; they leave their women and children behind them, when they go upon their plundering excursions; they are more shy and difficult to come up with than the kangaroo ” (Hobbs, p. 50). On one occasion Gilbert Robertson was within four miles of them for four days near the Blue Hills; * they beat round and round him like a hare; he had natives with him, who had been captured, to trace them, and whom he could trust. In July he was upon the track of from 100 to 200 natives at the Blue Hills; he supposed there were two tribes, one party going towards Oyster Bay, the other towards the westward: the party he followed to the westward suddenly disappeared, and he did not know by what means they hid their tracks. He continues: “ They cannot be surrounded by several parties coming upon them; they have no rendezvous except where game is plentiful; they go over the whole island; they always keep regular sentries, and pass over the most dangerous grounds, and by the brinks of the most dangerous precipices; they leave their women and children behind them, and send out parties to commit depredations; . . . the natives do not move by night; they are afraid of the moon ” (Col. and Slave, p. 47). West, the his- torian, gives the following accounts of hostile encounters with the natives: “ In the estimation of Europeans their practice in war was savage or cowardly ; ‘ they do not, like an Englishman,’ complained a colonial writer, ‘give notice before they strike.’ The perfection of war, in their esteem, was ambush and surprise; but an intelligent observer sometimes saw considerable cleverness in their tactics. Franks was on horseback, driving cattle homeward; he saw eight blacks forming a line behind him, to prevent his retreat, each with an uplifted spear, besides a bundle in the left hand. They then dropped on one knee, still holding the weapon in menace; then they rose and ran towards him in exact order; while they distracted his attention by their evolutions, other blacks gathered from all quarters, and within thirty yards a savage stood with his spear quivering in the air. This weapon, ten feet long, penetrated the flap of the saddle, and the flesh of the horse four inches, which dropped on his hind quarters. The rider Avas in despair; but the spear fell, and the animal recovered his feet and fled. The sen-ant, less fortunate than his master, Avas found some days after, slain. The attack A\-as Avell planned, and exhibited all the elements of military science. A tribe, Avho attacked the premises of Jones, in 1819, at the Macquarie, A\-ere led by a chief six [sir] feet high; he carried one spear, of a peculiar form, and no other kind of Aveapon; this he did not use, but stood Near Bothwell; there is a place of the same name south of Little Swan River on the East, Coast.$