https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_of_Indigenous_AustraliansList of massacres of Indigenous Australians
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Groups of Indigenous Australians were massacred on many occasions between the start of the English colonisation of Australia in 1788 and the 1920s. These massacres formed a significant element of the frontier wars.
The following list tallies a few of the better documented massacres of Aboriginal Australians, which took place mainly during the colonial period.
This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.
1789 Epidemics of disease were seen killing fifty percent or more of several tribes neighbouring the Sydney settlement. It has
not been determined if the initial infection was biological warfare using smallpox, or if it was a combination of half a dozen common Eurasian diseases that the indigenous population had never been exposed to before and therefore they had no acquired resistance to. A recently published article in "Journal of Australian Studies"
theorises that the outbreak of smallpox from the First Fleet was a deliberate act to overcome indigenous resistance to expansion of the early settlement. However if not deliberate it was inevitable as were the other epidemics of Eurasian diseases that cause very high death rates throughout the vulnerable indigenous populations across Australia. A large proportion of local clans were killed. See Warren, C., Smallpox at Sydney Cove - Who, When, Why? (2013).[1] The evidence was summarised by ABC Radio National program Ockham's Razor in 2014. See transcript. However this theory has been questioned by some researchers and Medical Doctors[2] who suggest the cause of the outbreak in question was more likely due to measles or chicken pox, which at the time was often identified as smallpox (see more details re this controversy in the History Wars section under the heading "Controversy over smallpox in Australia").
1790s[edit]
1790. In December, Governor Arthur Phillip issued an order for "a party...of two captains, two subalterns and forty privates, with a proper number of non-commissioned officers from the garrison...to bring in six of those natives who reside near the head of Botany Bay; or, if that number shall be found impracticable, to put that number to death".[3] This was largely i
n response to the spearing by Pemulwuy of Governor Phillip's gamekeeper, the convict John McEntire,
and his subsequent death. McEntire was suspected of violence towards Aboriginal people and his contemporary Watkin Tench later wrote that he was "the person of whom Abalone had, on former occasions, shown so much dread and hatred".[4] And, "from the aversion uniformly shown by all the to this unhappy man, he had long been suspected by us of having in his excursions shot and injured them". On his deathbed, McEntire "began...to accuse himself of the commission of crimes of the deepest dye", but "declared that he had never fired but once on a native, and then had not killed but severely wounded him in his own defence." Tench wrote of this denial, "Notwithstanding his deathbed confession,
most people doubted the truth of the relation, from his general character and other circumstances."[4]
1810s[edit]
1816. Appin massacre. New South Wales Governor Macquarie sent parties against the Gundungurra and Dharawal people along the Cataract River, a tributary of the Nepean River (south of Sydney), allegedly
in reprisal for their violent encroachments against white farms, that included murders, in the Nepean and Cowpastures districts, during a time of drought. The punitive expedition split in two at Bent's Basin, with one group moving south-west against the Gundungurra, and the other moving south-east against the Dharawal. This latter group came upon Cataract Gorge, where the soldiers used their horses to force men, women and children to fall from the cliffs of the gorge, to their deaths below.[5] The occurrence of the Cataract Gorge (or Appin) Massacre is confirmed by Heritage NSW and the University of Western Sydney.[6] On April 17, around 1 am soldiers arrived at a camp of Dharawal people at Appin. Captain Willis from the party of soldiers wrote: "The fires were burning but deserted. A few of my men heard a child cry [...] The dogs gave the alarm and the natives fled over the cliffs. It was moonlight. I regret to say some (were) shot and others met their fate by rushing in despair over the precipice. Fourteen dead bodies were counted in different directions."[7]
1820s[edit]
1824. Bathurst massacre.
Following
the killing of seven Europeans by Aboriginal people around Bathurst, New South Wales, and a battle between three stockmen and a warband over stolen cattle which left 16 Aborigines dead, Governor Brisbane declared martial law to restore order and was able to report a cessation of hostilities in which 'not one outrage was committed under it, neither was a life sacrificed or even Blood spilt'. Part of the tribe trekked down to Parramatta to attend the Governor's annual Reconciliation Day.[8][9]
1830s[edit]
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