(5) Massacre
Gudyarra (war) and the Bicentennial of Martial Law 2024 (5) - Massacre
It is impossible to know exactly when each of the massacres around the Central West occur, how many there are, or what exactly takes place as they are not officially recorded.[1]
After the Coxes arrive around 1821/1822 at ‘Guntawang’ and ‘Menah’[2] between Mudgee and Gulgong, it becomes an area of ongoing conflict between Coxes’ workers and the local Wiradjuri. George Henry Cox later describes one where ‘during an encounter at ‘Guntawang’ there were no less than seven whites killed, while the number of blacks slaughtered was never ascertained. The warfare was at all times pursued with unrelenting severity, men women and piccaninnies were indiscriminately killed.’ According to George Cox they end up abandoning the ‘Guntawang’ run in 1825.
During 1824 it appears as if a number of
massacres take place in the months before and after the Proclamation of Martial
Law on 14 August 1824. Places mentioned
around Mudgee district are – ‘the long reach of water at Dabee’; the Brymair massacre also in Dabee
Country; the tracking of and battle leading to a later massacre of Blucher’s
people which begins somewhere between Rylstone and Mudgee; the massacre of
‘Diana Mudgee’s people somewhere near Mt. Frome where she is found; and Bogee
Swamp. None of these are in official
records but have survived in settler’s writing, newspapers as well as oral
histories handed down by survivors.[3] The oral histories of massacres
on Dabee Country include a massacre by ‘Redcoats’ survived by 14 year old
Jimmy Lambert and that there is also a massacre at ‘Bogee Swamp’.
Sites mentioned in relation to massacres around Bathurst district. (Image: A.Maie)
Closer to Bathurst, as well as ‘The Bathurst/Potato Field Massacre’ and ‘The Murdering Hut’ in May, there are mentions of massacres at Billywillinga, Bells Falls Gorge near Wattle Flat, and Clear Creek. [4]
Missionary Lancelot Threlkeld later writes of the Magistrate telling him ‘a large number were driven into a swamp, and mounted police rode round and round and shot them off indiscriminately until they were all destroyed…all were destroyed, Men Women and Children.’
W.H. Suttor writes, and is later quoted in the National, “At the place we are writing of a camp of blacks had been established. The proclamation of martial law was as undecipherable to them as Egyptian hieroglyph. This mattered little to the whites — the fiat had gone forth and must be acted upon. So a party of soldiers was despatched to deal with those at this camp. Negotiations, apparently friendly, but really treacherous, were entered into. Food was prepared, and was placed on the ground within musket range of the station buildings. The blacks were invited to come for it. Unsuspectingly they did come, principally women and children. As they gathered up the white men's presents they were shot down by a brutal volley, without regard to age or sex.”[5]
Before 21 July – ‘the long reach of water at Dabee’
From the writing of George Henry Cox we know that Aaron returns to his people and is ‘shot in the long reach of water at Dabee’.
My reckoning is that this takes place at some stage before 21 July when questions are asked about Aaron’s welfare.
We also know that William Cox has holdings on the Dabee plains, an area recommended to him by Aaron/Ering, which Theophilus Chamberlain oversees.
George Henry Cox writes ’an immense number of the natives, men, women and children were slaughtered at Mudgee and amongst them poor old Aaron our guide. He was shot in the long reach of water at Dabee’.[6]
It is likely that Theophilus Chamberlain[7] is involved as are other workers in the area and possibly ‘mounted police’. If so, whether the ‘police’ are part of the detachments sent out to scour around Mudgee in June, or a temporary force which Attorney-General Saxe Bannister suggests in July, or members of the 40th Regiment, or renegades is unknown.
By now all Wiradjuri appear to have disappeared from the main settlement and the warriors are banding together to fight the invaders. Aaron is a Tabellbucoo man so perhaps his and a number of other clans have gathered there for safety or to regroup and are also killed.
On or before 20 July. The Lawson’s landholding south of Bathurst is targeted twice leaving five men killed, some of whom are scalped, and stock killed and dispersed. The friendship William Lawson and others have had with the Wiradjuri is over.
29 July. ‘Candid’ writes to the Gazette requesting accurate information about ‘affair…at or near Mudjee’ where ‘five blacks were killed’ and whether “Erin” is “dead or alive! If dead, in what way did he die? Were not three females found dead, their bodies mangled with the native dogs, and who were supposed to have been shot? On the same authority to which I have referred, but of a date considerably prior, is it not stated, that parties of the blacks were found, and fired upon? …. will you, or any of your Correspondents, simply explain how "only five natives" were killed?’ (published on 12 August)
5 August. Gazette. ‘Fidelis’ complains that it is unfortunate that the military did not follow up those ‘dispersed’ by ‘mounted settlers’ from Bathurst.
‘Philanthropos’ calls for ‘the law of kindness’,
‘peace’ and reparation – ‘how can we approve of our own conduct, in having
first invaded their land, and…deprived them of their pleasure and substance’.
© A. Maie, 2024
NOTE. This timeline is primarily based on the research and writing of Stephen Gapps in Gudyarra – recommended reading for a more detailed account of events and people involved.
[1]
Threlkeld’s account includes an Officer replying ‘that there was no necessity
for a return’ as everyone had been killed.
[2]
The dating of events is not always consistent.
Both ‘Menah’ and ‘Guntawang’ are mentioned in various sources. I have also heard and read Piambong and Billyeena mentioned in relation to conflict and
massacres but have not yet found anything to corroborate this. What I
have read as far as location around Menah includes - ‘The big black fellow
“Sunday” affirmed that he owned all the land about Mudgee and that “Missa Cox
only got it”’ and ‘While such men were at the head of the Mudgee and Guntawang
tribes no peace was possible’. (Memoirs of William Cox, pp. 130, 131).
[3] I have to wonder if the Wiradjuri around Mudgee
district are also poisoned. One descendant explains how the fear remains, ‘Yet my father warned us as small boys not to eat or
drink anything we didn’t know where it had come from’. (Loughrey, Fr. Glenn,
‘Say Yes’ in Disarming Times, Vol.
48, No.3, September 2023, pp. 1-3). In a
2013 article, ‘How I Learned about the Wiradjuri massacres’ Gavin Gatemby
writes of being a young boy visiting a property at Ulan in the late 1950’s and
early 1960’s with his father and ‘once
they talked about how the local Aborigines (who we now know as the Wiradjuri
People) had been killed off in massacres and by poisoning the waterholes.’ (https://cityhub.com.au/how-i-learned-about-the-wiradjuri-massacres/ )
[4] In What the Colonists Never Knew, Professor Dennis Foley writes, 'My dad..always said he was Wiradjuri from Capertee…My uncles on Dad’s side took me up to the killing fields along Turon River…telling a kid in the (19)60’s about these massacre sites around Turon and taking me in the old camps. They used to say to me…..’We don’t know enough about what went on, but we know this is where our people got killed, this is where they got wiped out’.' (pp. 61, 62)
[5]
W.H. Suttor, Australian
Stories Retold and Sketches of Country Life and ‘The Massacres at Bathurst’
in The Australian Abo Call (The National)
1 June 1938, p.3.
[6] George Henry Cox also claims elsewhere that Aaron is
killed in tribal warfare, yet this does not sit with this statement or the
questions asked by readers of the Gazette
wanting clarification.
[7] Theophilus Chamberlain is
well known to the Coxes, having worked for them at Mulgoa. In 1819 he is convicted of stealing. After serving his sentence he returns to work
at their holdings in the Bathurst region.
George Henry Cox writes ‘He was then transferred to Guntawang’. His
reputation is described by George Henry Cox as ‘ruthless’, ‘cruel’ and ‘vindictive’
and that ‘on one occasion made a remark that had he the power, there would not
be one blackfellow alive’. The Coxes
certainly know of his reputation.
William Cox is integral to the planning which leads to the Appin
Massacre in 1816. He is also vocal in
his desire to protect his investments and clear the land of all opposition, and
agitates politically for greater military action. That the Coxes do not sack Chamberlain until
1825 after the land is ‘cleared’ raises questions about the family’s
complicity.
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