The general view of the settler community was that Moorhouse held a cosy sinecure in his comfortable Adelaide compound, where a handful of Aboriginal children were taught the alphabet while in the frontier districts the very people over whom he should have been exercising control were killing settlers’ stock and spearing their shepherds. As each new frontier crisis was reported in the press, the question was invariably asked, ‘where is the Protector?’ While his given role was the advocacy and protection of the Aboriginal population, there was an implicit sense in the settler community that his real task should be ensuring Aboriginal compliance to the needs of settlers. In the neighbouring Port Phillip Protectorate, Moorhouse’s counter-part George Augustus Robinson at least had the assistance of four Sub-Protectors who each supervised districts of relatively modest size. Protector Moorhouse, charged with the supervision of Aboriginal people in a vastly more extensive, and seemingly ever-expanding territory, rarely had more than one Sub-Protector operating under his control at any one time.
Despite the perception that he was an office-bound bureaucrat, Moorhouse travelled extensively through the colony endeavouring to instruct Aboriginal people about the new regime that was being imposed upon them. Between 1847 and 1851, he travelled to each of the colony’s frontier districts in the south east, the Eyre and Yorke Peninsulas and the mid north. On each occasion he distributed rations as a show of good faith and, through an interpreter, endeavoured to explain the law. A more abiding legacy of his tenure of Protector was the establishment of an extensive system of ration distribution.
The Systematic distribution of rations
The origins of a system of ration distribution lie in 1841, when Edward Eyre was posted to Moorundie in the aftermath of the Rufus River massacre. As Sub-Protector of Aborigines, Eyre was instructed to assemble the local Aboriginal population on ‘every other full moon’ and issue them with a present of flour on the condition of good behaviour. Governor Grey believed that such assemblies would provide Aboriginal people with the chance to air their grievances, and for the Protector and police to address them. Distributions of flour were also attempted at Port Lincoln in the early 1840s, although on an ad hoc basis, and intended primarily for the elderly or infirm. In March 1847 Governor Robe, at the prompting of the Commissioner of Police, asked Protector Matthew Moorhouse to investigate the establishment of a broader system of ration distributions. The earlier systems at Port Lincoln and Moorundie were held up as examples of how rations could be successfully used to ‘pacify’ the Aborigines.13
By the late 1840s, both the Protector and the Commissioner of Police had sufficient experience of the colony’s frontiers to appreciate that a significant motive for stock theft was deprivation caused by settlement, as Aboriginal people lost access to traditional resources. Rations were conceived as a form of compensation, and a means of drawing Aboriginal people away from the runs of settlers. Moorhouse made the following recommendations:
The distribution of flour should take place once a month (at the full moon), that at outstations 4 lb should be issued to each adult, and 2 lb to each child, under twelve years of age, & a registry kept of all who attend.14
In addition to the sites already operating at Moorundie and Port Lincoln, Moorhouse recommended the establishment of seven new ration depots, mostly housed in established police stations and all in areas of considerable Aboriginal population which had seen marked conflict: Bungaree and Mt Remarkable in the mid-north, Lake Bonney and Wellington on the River Murray, Guichen Bay and Mt Gambier in the south east, and Encounter Bay in the south. It was decided that the police already operating in these districts would manage the distributions. For the police, ration distribution would, for a time, provide them with one form of control and surveillance over Aboriginal people.15
As the frontier spread further into the interior, new depots were established as need dictated. In the early 1850s, in the aftermath of attacks on newly established pastoral stations in the southern Flinders Ranges, the government decided on the Protector’s recommendation to appoint a new Sub-Protector and establish a new ‘feeding station’ in the north. As Protector Moorhouse explained, the ‘settlers are all short of men to attend their flocks & the Natives are much disposed to take advantage of it’ and a ‘feeding station would be a means of keeping them quiet’.16 The depot was established on 1 February 1853 at Mount Brown and Henry Minchin, a local magistrate, was appointed Sub-Protector. Moorhouse summarised Minchin’s role: ‘His aim will be to induce the wild natives from the hills to live at his station, and by keeping them some time in contact with himself and the police, so far civilize them, as to render them not only harmless, but useful to the settlers’.17
Over the course of the 1850s, the practice of distributing rations to Aborigines from police stations became formalised. Rations of flour, tea and sugar, occasionally supplemented with other goods such as blankets and medical supplies, were issued to those Aboriginal people regarded as being most in need. They were restricted to ‘the sick, the old, the infirm, orphan children and women with infants under twelve years old’, for the able-bodied were expected to find work or to subsist by fishing and hunting; in reality, the rations issued to dependents would have been shared among the family group.18 Yet it is unlikely that ration distributions ever had much effect in suppressing frontier violence. For Aboriginal people, attacks on settlers’ stock and property were both a means of subsistence and a form of resistance. More often than not, it was only when the phase of frontier conflict had largely passed – when European dominance was more firmly established and Aboriginal people made refugees in their own land – that people came in significant numbers to the depots.
In 1863 the newly-appointed Protector James Walker added an innovation to the ration system by arranging for them to be distributed on selected pastoral stations. Distributing rations from pastoral rather than police stations would be both more economical to the government and more practical, since numbers of Aboriginal people already coalesced near the pastoral stations. Having government rations to issue eventually proved to be an unexpected advantage to station owners. The Protector of Aborigines noted in 1868 that settlers were often disappointed when he refused to grant them rations for distribution to Aboriginal people, and that ‘great jealousy exists between those who have Aboriginal depots and those who have not’.19 There are a number of reasons for this. In the first instance, rations could be used to obtain some control over the Aboriginal people in the district; as one settler put it, they would keep Aboriginal people near the station and within view, where ‘they would not do so much damage’.20 More importantly, as the phase of frontier antagonisms passed and Aboriginal people became the principal source of labour in the pastoral industry, government rations constituted an inducement for them to work on a station, and for their bosses, a way of subsidising the cost of labour. From Aboriginal people’s point of view, rations could provide a source of support when their own resources were diminishing and a means of retaining important connection to their land, albeit in a transformed socio-political environment.
The Native Police
Another government response to managing the frontier in this period was the establishment of a Native Police force. For a number of years, the police had employed Aboriginal people on an ad hoc basis for their skills as trackers and for their ability to speak the language of the local Aboriginal population. The principal now was to establish small Aboriginal forces under the command of a European officer to operate as units throughout the colony. The model was the Native Police force operating in the Port Phillip district which was principally used to track and capture other Aboriginal people, and operated under the command of a European officer. In 1850, Protector Matthew Moorhouse was asked his opinion about the organisation of such a force. Following the Port Phillip model, he agreed that Native Police should not operate autonomously, or have the same powers as ordinary police; they should not be involved in the capture of Europeans, serve summonses, take charge of pri
soners, or prosecute inquiries into crimes. They should be located in remote districts and assist European officers in tracking and recovering stolen sheep and cattle, and in the ‘detection of native offenders’.21 Not everyone agreed with this approach: in 1854 Sub-Protector Henry Minchin suggested that the Native Police at Port Augusta should perform their duties under his authority, ‘exclusive of the European police,’ because the latter, he feared, would ‘attempt mastery’ over them, leading to ill-feelings. The Commissioner of Police was unconvinced, writing that ‘Mr Minchin cannot be everywhere and the NP couldn’t be trusted alone’.22 The Native Police never operated autonomously.
Towards the close of 1852, a detachment of twelve Native Police was established in the Port Lincoln district under the command of Corporal John Cusack. Its duties were ‘to patrol the country and follow with expeditions, in case of need, the perpetrators of any outrage, accompanied however by and under the orders of a European constable’.23 The Native Police would be paid £18/5/0 per annum with clothing and rations, with the expenditure to be charged to the Aborigines Land Fund.24 In early 1854, newly appointed Police Commissioner Peter Egerton Warburton expanded the Native Police force, overseeing the establishment of additional corps at Wellington, Moorundie and Port Augusta under European officers. Many of these constables would operate as Mounted Police and all were armed with a sword, a carbine and a pistol.25
On the surface, there was a certain administrative elegance in the plan: by 1854 there were four separate detachments of Native Police scattered throughout the colony, all armed and most of them mounted, led by a European officer, and under the command of a regional Police Inspector who was also a Sub-Protector of Aborigines. Yet in comparison to the fearful reputation such forces would garner elsewhere, most particularly in Queensland over the coming decades, once established these Native Police corps became virtually invisible in the historical record. Comment is occasionally made in police reports about their good or bad conduct, but rarely do police reports highlight their involvement in patrols. Indeed, there is no record that any of these Native Constables actually fired a shot in anger. This might be partly explained by the fact that these corps were established at a time when the worst of the violence in those districts had passed, and perhaps also by the fact that most Native Constables were outsiders in the districts to which they were posted.
By 1856, the usefulness of the Native Police corps was being questioned. Writing to the Commissioner of Police that year, Inspector Holroyd argued that the Native Police were useless as ‘trackers or aides of Justice in a country that does not belong to them – they know nothing of its waterholes, they do not know where to go to look for a wild native, and from being always mounted and well clothed, they lose the chief quality wanted in them, namely tracking’. He found it difficult to justify retaining them.26 At about the same time, Corporal Mason, Inspector of the Native Police on the southern Murray River, wrote to inform the Commissioner that his Native Constables had all left to work the harvest and had not returned; he was instructed not to enlist any more.27 Soon afterwards, the Native Police corps were disbanded. Although Aboriginal people would be employed as trackers throughout the force for many years to come, a dedicated Native Police force would not be established again until the expansion of the Central Australian frontier in the mid-1880s. Unlike their counterparts during the 1850s, the Native Police in Central Australia would come to earn a reputation for violence of a kind largely unmonitored by the police administration a long way to the south.28 At this stage, Central Australia was another newly evolving frontier, subject to the same problems of implementing the rule of law that had been experienced on earlier settler frontiers across Australia.
Aboriginal Rights on Pastoral Lands
One of the more surprising administrative innovations of the early 1850s – a Colonial Office intervention – was a decision to enshrine in law Aboriginal access rights to pastoral leases of the Crown. In the 1840s squatters, principally in New South Wales, agitated for more secure tenure than the existing annual depasturing licences in the form of a system of pastoral leases. The Colonial Office was wary about the extent to which the control of Crown lands should be surrendered to private individuals. Another concern, however, was the impact these changes might have on Aboriginal people. In 1846, Port Phillip’s Chief Protector George Augustus Robinson wrote:
The claims of the Aborigines to a reasonable share in the soil of their fatherland has not, I regret to say, been recognised in any of the discussions which for so great a length of time, have agitated the public mind on the question of rights of Squatters, to the occupancy of the lands of the Crown.29
As Robinson put it, Aboriginal people would soon have ‘no place for the soles of their feet’.30 The British government was responsive to these concerns. In 1848 the Secretary of State, Earl Grey, made it clear that these leases were exclusively for the pasturage of cattle and were ‘not intended to deprive the natives of their former right to hunt over these Districts, or wander over them in search of subsistence’. The Order-in-Council, authorising the introduction of fourteen-year pastoral leases, instructed the Governor to insert whatever conditions he thought necessary ‘for the protection of the Aborigines’. As South Australia’s Governor Young was entering into discussions with the Crown Lands Commissioner about the form which that protection might take, events on the west coast coincidentally underscored the need for it.
In November 1850, an Aboriginal group stole 800 head of sheep from Henry Beard’s station at Cape Radstock, 175 miles north-west of Port Lincoln, and plundered his shepherd’s hut. Henry Beard went in pursuit of his flock, and was speared to death bringing the sheep back.31 Before establishing his run, Beard had been warned by police that the Streaky Bay Aboriginals were ‘on very bad terms with the whites from the bad treatment they receive from the whalers’, but he had ignored the caution. Referring to Beard’s murder in a report to the Colonial Office, Governor Young observed that the settler had been ‘reckless’ in establishing a run in such a remote region, and without a licence to occupy the country.32 Sergeant Geharty tracked the sheep stealers and in attempting to take prisoners, he reported, ‘it became necessary to fire on them in self defence’.33 The Police Commissioner George Dashwood and Protector Moorhouse were despatched to the west coast to investigate Beard’s murder and the subsequent shooting of Aboriginal people. They spent almost a month in the region, speaking with Aboriginal groups as they travelled along the coast, and learnt that Aboriginal people broadly held a ‘fear of passing through the runs of the settlers, which we regret to find can seldom be done by the natives with impunity’.34
Meanwhile a draft of the conditions spelling out Aboriginal access rights was published in the Government Gazette for public comment. One of the few to offer comment was Archdeacon Matthew Hale, who had recently established the Poonindie Mission near Port Lincoln. While he had no objection to the provisions, he reminded the Governor that Aboriginal use of the land, such as the practice of using fire to hunt game, was ‘diametrically opposed to the interests of the white occupiers of land’. Their rights of access needed to be clearly spelled out, including access to watering places. In response to Hale’s recommendations the Commissioner of Crown Lands Charles Bonney suggested simply withdrawing the access provisions and providing Aboriginal people with ‘provisions and clothing’ as compensation for deprivation of ‘their means of securing food’. The Governor, however, would not be dissuaded. He instructed Bonney to ensure that reservations were made for Aboriginal people to ‘follow their usual customs in searching for food’, to ‘dwell upon lands held under lease’, and to ensure rights of access to watering places. In a subsequent letter to the Chief Secretary, Bonney explained the logic of the new provisions:
whether it may be found expedient or not to allow full exercise of these privileges, I think such reservations should be inserted in the leases as will give the Government complete control in the matter.
I am of opinion that th
e knowledge that the Government is in possession of this power and that the runs are liable to be resumed for the use of the natives, will be sufficient to ensure the forbearance of the white people, and to render them rather desirous of conciliating the natives in order that no necessity may arise for the exercise of these powers.35
A new system of fourteen-year pastoral leases came in to operation on 1 July 1851, and included the clear direction that Aboriginal inhabitants of the province and their descendents would continue to have ‘full and free right of ingress, egress and regress’ upon the lands leased by the Crown. They ‘may at all times during this demise use occupy dwell upon and obtain food and water’ upon those lands, ‘unobstructed’ by the lessee. They may erect such ‘dwellings as they have heretofore been accustomed to make,’ and ‘take and use as food birds and animals ferae naturae in such a manner as they would have been entitled to do if this demise had not been made’.36 Not only were the ‘occupiers of runs’ to be made aware that they risked forfeiting the runs if they breached the conditions of the lease, but if so forfeited, the land would be ‘resumed for the use of the natives’.
What is astonishing is that there was barely a murmur of protest from pastoralists acquiring these new leases, a fact explainable by the coincidental drama of the Victorian gold rush and the sudden demand for Aboriginal labourers. By 1852, the Victorian gold rush was drawing away South Australia’s labour force as thousands of people, from pastoral workers to police, resigned their jobs to try their luck at the Victorian diggings. Sub-Protector Edward Bates Scott at Moorundie on the River Murray reported that large numbers of people were streaming past his station: ‘for some months past the line of road … has been well defined by extensive caravans’.37 Some fears were voiced that Aboriginal people would rise up against undermanned and isolated stations. In February 1852, J.B. Hughes, recently appointed a Special Magistrate at Bundaleer in the North, wrote to the government complaining about the withdrawal of police from Mount Remarkable:
Out of the Silence Page 13
