Listening to the whispering in his own heart, Henry Reynolds was led into the lives of remarkable and largely forgotten white humanitarians who followed their consciences and challenged the prevailing attitudes to Indigenous people. His now-classic book The Whispering in Our Hearts, constructed an alternative history of Australia through the eyes of those who felt disquiet and disgust at the brutality of dispossession. These men and women fought for justice for Indigenous people even when doing so left them isolated and criticised by their fellow whites.
In this new edition, Reynolds brings fresh perspectives to issues we grapple with still. This powerful book shows how much remains to be done to settle the whispering in our hearts.
Listening to the whispering in his own heart, Henry Reynolds was led into the lives of remarkable and largely forgotten white humanitarians who followed their consciences and challenged the prevailing attitudes to Indigenous people. His now-classic book The Whispering in Our Hearts, constructed an alternative history of Australia through the eyes of those who felt disquiet and disgust at the brutality of dispossession. These men and women fought for justice for Indigenous people even when doing so left them isolated and criticised by their fellow whites.
In this new edition, Reynolds brings fresh perspectives to issues we grapple with still. This powerful book shows how much remains to be done to settle the whispering in our hearts.
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Listening to the whispering in his own heart, Henry Reynolds was led into the lives of remarkable and largely forgotten white humanitarians who followed their consciences and challenged the prevailing attitudes to Indigenous people. His now-classic book The Whispering in Our Hearts, constructed an alternative history of Australia through the eyes of those who felt disquiet and disgust at the brutality of dispossession. These men and women fought for justice for Indigenous people even when doing so left them isolated and criticised by their fellow whites.
In this new edition, Reynolds brings fresh perspectives to issues we grapple with still. This powerful book shows how much remains to be done to settle the whispering in our hearts.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781742244310 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | UNSW Press |
| Publication date: | 11/01/2018 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 288 |
| File size: | 989 KB |
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CHAPTER 1
THE CONCERNS OF GENTLEMEN, 1790–1847
Australia's first punitive expedition provoked the first clash of conscience. Following the spearing of one of his servants in December 1790, Governor Phillip decided to dispatch a military detachment to punish the tribe considered responsible. He instructed Captain Watkin Tench to take 50 men and capture two of the offending tribe, and to kill and decapitate ten others. Tench suggested less stringent measures – six Aboriginal men captured, of which two would be hanged and four transported to Norfolk Island. If they could not be taken alive they were to be shot and beheaded. Tench explained that the Governor had determined to 'strike a decisive blow, in order, at once to convince them of our superiority, and to infuse an universal terror' in Aboriginal society.
While Tench sought successfully to moderate the Governor's instructions, his younger colleague, the 29-year-old Lieutenant William Dawes, objected to the expedition itself. Although on duty at the time, Dawes wrote to his commanding officer, Captain Campbell, refusing to take part in the venture. Both Campbell and Phillip pressed him to obey orders and threatened him with arrest. After consulting the settlement's Anglican clergyman, Rev. M Johnson, Dawes agreed to march with the detachment but subsequently told the Governor he regretted his decision. While reporting the incident to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Lord Grenville, Phillip remarked that Dawes had 'very clearly showed that he would not obey a similar order in future'. A year later he refused to apologise to Phillip although requested to do so.
It was a portentous clash of will, aspiration and conscience. Phillip was the man of Empire with a vision of flourishing colonial enterprise. If the Aboriginal people stood in the way they would be coerced, if necessary by means of terror. Dawes was an evangelical Christian, an enthusiast and humanitarian, a personal friend of William Wilberforce and associated with the nascent campaign against slavery that was soon to widen out and embrace the Empire's indigenous people.
Premonitions of violence were borne out during the first generation of settlement. While it didn't necessarily shake the confidence of governors and lesser officials in the colonial venture itself, they expressed deep disquiet about their inability to control the brutality unleashed on the frontiers of settlement. In 1810, just six years after arriving in Hobart, Governor David Collins issued an official statement deploring the 'abominable cruelties' that had been 'practised' upon the Aboriginal people by the Europeans. His successor, Thomas Davey, was similarly concerned when he learnt that Aboriginal resentment had been 'justly excited' by settler brutality. In a proclamation of June 1814, he declared:
Had not the Lieutenant Governor the most positive and distinct proofs of such barbarous crimes having been committed, he could not have believed that a British subject would so ignominiously have stained the honour of his country and of himself; but the facts are too clear, and it therefore becomes the indispensable bounden duty of the Lieutenant Governor thus publicly to express his utter indignation and abhorrence thereof.
Tasmania's third governor, William Sorell, reacted in a similar manner in 1819 when informed about the ways of up-country settlers. In a proclamation of 13 March he declared:
It is undeniable that, in many former instances, cruelties have been perpetuated repugnant to Humanity and disgraceful to the British character ... The impressions remaining from earlier injuries are kept up by the occasional outrages of miscreants whose scene of crime is so remote as to render detection difficult; and who sometimes wantonly fire at and kill the men and ... pursue the women for the purpose of compelling them to abandon their children. This last outrage is perhaps the most certain of all to excite in the sufferers a strong thirst for revenge against all white men.
With settlement expanding rapidly in both New South Wales and Tasmania during the 1820s, frontier conflict spiralled. Many more frontiersmen were living in remote locations where detection of crime was beyond the powers of fledgling governments. But as the wave of colonisation fanned outward from the port cities, urban critics arose who questioned the behaviour and attitudes born of the lawless frontier. They were met by advocates of rapid development in a debate that has continued in one form or another ever since.
Conflict around Bathurst in 1824 inspired a vigorous exchange of letters in the Sydney Gazette that canvassed contending views about frontier settlement, attendant violence and the nature of both up-country settlers and the Aboriginal people. The exchange began in July with a letter from a correspondent who chose the name 'Fidelis' and lamented the fate of murdered stockmen: 'so many defenceless and unprotected fellow men' who were stationed 'beyond the reach of succour, inhumanely murdered, robbed, or pillaged'. Fidelis called for the most determined measures to effect the 'suppression of such wanton atrocity and horrid murder' and to avenge the loss 'of our murdered countrymen'. Did not such Aboriginal attacks,
call aloud for the extirpation of such lawless marauders? And do not lacerated remains of the unburied corpses, and mangled limbs of individuals, who have breathed their last in agony, in the lonely sequestered forests ... kindle feelings indescribable in the breast of every generous member of our community and demand immediate punishment?
Fidelis believed that the attempt to reason with the Aboriginal offenders would be 'attended with as much success, as would the application of eloquence to subdue or command any kind of undomesticated cattle'. So mercy should be 'unquestionably laid aside ... until by a 'true sense of our superiority they would discontinue their murder and rapacity'.
The humanitarian riposte came quickly. In the next issue of the weekly paper, 'Philanthropus' denounced the view of Fidelis and introduced many of the themes that were to run through public discourse for many years. He began by affirming the humanity of Aboriginal people and the common origin of all peoples. 'I think they have with myself, and all other men', he declared, 'one common ancestor'. He was, 'therefore, willing to call them brethren, and to acknowledge them entitled to my compassion and fraternal respect'. Then in a direct challenge to frontier settlers he declared:
Hence, I have been led to estimate even the least one of these, my despised and injured brethren, at more value than all the sheep and cattle on Bathurst Plains; than all the flocks and herds in the territory of New South Wales; than all the animals in the whole world!
But the Aboriginal people had a further claim on the settlers. They were the original proprietors of the country to whom was owed 'an equivalent, in such kind and manner as may afford or secure to them the greatest benefit'. This put their attacks on the Bathurst Plains stockmen in a different perspective. 'If we do not approve of their conduct', Philanthropus observed, how can we approve of the settlers' own behaviour 'in having first invaded their land, and, in a great measure, deprived them of their pleasure and subsistence'. He concluded with a flourish:
Rather than trespass any further, should we not endeavour now to make reparation, and so prove to them, and to all mankind, that we are not in principle, or in practice, less honorable than heathens; but that, on the contrary, we are humane and generous Christians – and really concerned for the welfare of these aborigines.
Fidelis had another challenger three weeks later. 'Amicitia' was outraged by the suggestion that there should be a total extermination of the Bathurst tribes. While it might prevent further resistance, it would be 'a needless, unmerited, and consequently a murderous destruction of our fellow men'. The 'extinction of human life' was an act 'so transcendentally awful in its consequences' that it could 'only be justified by extreme necessity'. Unless that could be established, the massacre of Aboriginal people would be 'foul and unpardonable murder'. And what, asked Amicitia, did Fidelis mean by vengeance? Directly addressing his adversary, he declared: 'If you mean anything more than legal punishment, you mean more than you ought, more than can be sanctioned in a civilized and Christian country'. To be legal, punishment could only be inflicted on the guilty and be in proportion to the crime. Punitive expeditions would inevitably involve innocent victims and especially women and children. All talk of universal terror overlooked the fact that Aboriginal people were fellow subjects:
They are recognised as such by the British Government, which has taken them under its control, and extends to them its protection ... they are governed and defended by the same laws as ourselves, so far as those laws are applicable to their condition ... The general rule of our conduct towards the blacks must therefore be, to treat them in precisely the same manner as we should treat any other British subjects in the like circumstances.
In Tasmania in 1824, a similar situation was unfolding. Settlers and their flocks rapidly occupied the open grasslands between Hobart and Launceston. Aboriginal resistance intensified, bringing forth calls for punitive and pre-emptive action. As in Sydney, the community was divided. Humanitarians viewed with growing alarm the spiralling calls for vengeance. In a letter to the Hobart Town Gazette, 'Zeno' related Aboriginal hostility to the loss of their land and game, leading to threatened starvation. The conflict of interest should be as far as possible 'averted by us in a just spirit of brotherly conciliation'. Addressing his fellow colonists, he wrote:
We ought to feel that we have invaded a domain from which our invasion has expelled those who were born, bred, and providentially supplied in it; that we have driven by our usurpation, families from their birth-place, and then completed our cruelty by destroying in sport, and consuming for profit, the principal means of their subsistence.
Because the settlers had been responsible for 'unprovoked aggressions', it was essential that they 'devise some way of compensation'.
The first phase of humanitarian concern climaxed in a long, anonymous report sent from New South Wales in October 1826 to the Methodist Missionary Society in London. 'A letter from a Gentleman in New South Wales to a friend at —' is 28 pages long and provides a savage assessment of the impact of colonisation. It is an important document requiring close examination. 'Strange to say', the Gentleman began, 'Civilisation has been the scourge of the Natives: Disease, Crime, Misery and Death' have been the 'sure attendants of our intercourse with them ... Could we but trace each poor individual's history', he lamented, 'what a tale would it unfold'. The results were not incidental to colonial progress. Indeed, it was 'a sad truth to assert' that settler prosperity had been 'their ruin, our increase their destruction'. The colonial venture was marred by a fatal flaw. It was tragic, not triumphant. The fate of the Aboriginal people shadowed the land. 'With what pleasure', he asked rhetorically:
can we possibly survey the rapid encroachment of the Whites on these unhappy people? With what feelings can we look forward, but with those of deep regret, when we are assured that every new step which advances our interests is fatal to their existence? That every acre of land reclaimed by our industry is so much wrested from that pittance which Providence has bestowed on them.
The future for the Aboriginal people was bleak, the prognosis desperate, for if 'such be the truth the ruin of the Aborigines is inevitable'. Tribe after tribe, he concluded, must successively endure the same measure of suffering until 'total annihilation ... winds up the sad Catastrophe'. 'Should such a state of things be realized', he declared:
what will future generations think of our boasted Christianity, of our lauded Philanthropy, when our posterity read in the early page of Australia's history the miseries and ruin which marked our adoption of this land; – when they find recorded that our proprietorship of the soil has been purchased at such a costly sacrifice of human happiness and life.
But there was more than moral outrage in the Gentleman's lament. He viewed the Aboriginal people as the legitimate owners of the land, and was profoundly troubled by the fact that they were dispossessed without treaty, purchase or negotiation. Justice, he insisted,
demands what humanity dictates and Christianity requires, that we should not usurp the possession of another's rights, however advantageous such may be to ourselves or however easy of accomplishment. How we have usurped the rights of others in possessing ourselves of their land without even the offer of an equivalent. And we have thus done, also, at the heaviest possible cost to the rightful proprietors, viz. their certain ruin. We are therefore deeply indebted to this unhappy people; debtors beyond what money can repay or restitution compensate, for Property may be returned, but life cannot.
Deeply then are we in arrears to these injured Beings at whose expense we live and prosper.
The logic was relentless, the moral judgment unforgiving. 'None can defend our Conduct towards the New Hollanders', the Gentleman declared bluntly, 'let us not therefore persist in it, and let them yet receive from our hands some reparation for the wrongs we have done them'.
Debate about the morality and practice of colonisation intensified in the 1830s and 1840s. During those years, settlement was propelled outwards from the already established districts close to the port cities of Hobart, Sydney, Adelaide and Perth. Wool became the great export staple; the pastoral interest grew in wealth and political power. At the same time the humanitarian movement reached the height of its authority, influence and moral certainty. With the triumphant abolition of slavery in 1833, the humanitarians turned their attention to the indigenous peoples of the Empire, a development symbolised by the important House of Commons Select Committee on Native Peoples in 1836–37 and the great expansion of missionary endeavour.
The humanitarian impulse collided with the drive to force the pace of colonial development and take up Aboriginal territory on an unprecedented scale. Colonial society divided deeply over the assessment of Aboriginal society, over Indigenous rights and the obligations of the colonists towards those they had dispossessed. The army surgeon Thomas Bartlett, who visited Australia in the early 1840s, found that there were two points of view 'diametrically opposed to each other, respecting the character of the Aboriginal population'. He realised that the ideas had important practical implications. 'These opinions', he explained 'demand attentive consideration, as on them depends the justice, or otherwise, of the manner in which the natives are treated'. One class of settlers, which Bartlett was sorry to confess to his English audience, was a numerous one, maintained that the Aboriginal people were not 'entitled to be looked upon as fellow creatures'. As a result, they adopted the harshest and most severe measures towards them. 'There are persons in these colonies', he observed,
in what are considered respectable stations in society, who have the hardihood to defend savage butcheries that have been committed by the whites on the natives, by asserting they resemble so many wild beasts, and that it is proper to destroy them accordingly.
He was even more concerned with colonists who went so far in their attempts at justification to impiously declare that it was God's will that the 'black should recede before the white man'.
The second point of view was held by philanthropic individuals who were more common in Britain itself than in the colonies. They viewed with horror the 'inroad made into the possessions of the native' and the forcing of the 'unfortunate Aborigine' to submit to British law and to be administered by a people 'through whom they have endured much injury'.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "This Whispering in our Hearts Revisted"
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Copyright © 2018 Henry Reynolds.
Excerpted by permission of University of New South Wales Press Ltd.
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Table of Contents
Preface: Whispering vi
Introduction: 2018 ix
1 The concerns of gentlemen, 1790-1847 1
2 Missionaries and protectors, 1810-49 19
3 A reasonable share in the soil: Robinson and Threlkeld in New South Wales, 1824-48 40
4 Great displeasure: Lyon and Giustiniani in Western Australia, 1829-38 59
5 Agitation against assassination: Queensland, 1860-80 77
6 The crusade of The Queenslander, 1880-90 92
7 John Gribble goes west, 1885-87 118
8 Two unlikely agitators: Angelo and Carley, 1880-90 135
9 Modern massacre: Forrest River and Coniston, 1926-28 151
10 The Caledon Bay affair, 1932-34 172
11 Agitation and reform, 1920-40 184
12 Dramatic changes, 1945-72 208
13 Reconciliation and recapitulation, 1992- 225
Conclusion 243
Notes 249
Index 265