The �Value' of Indigenous Executions to South Australia and Western Australia
In the formative years of South Australian settlement it was very clear what purpose Indigenous executions were to perform in the colony. In 1840 twenty-six Europeans were killed in the Coorong after their brig, the Maria, ran aground in the area.
The survivors had fallen foul of the local Milmenrura clan, a group of the Ngarrindjeri people, who were engaged by the Europeans to guide them back to Adelaide.[608] The �Maria Massacre’, as it became known, was the single largest murder of Europeans by Indigenous people in Australian colonial history.[609] The South Australian Police Commissioner, Major Thomas O’Halloran, was dispatched by the Governor to �apprehend, and bring to summary justice, the ringleaders in the murder, or any of the murderers (in all not to exceed three)’.[610] The speech he gave at the subsequent double hanging at the scene of the massacre articulates the rationale of Indigenous executions in the colony thereafter:Black men, this is the white’s punishment for murder, the next time white men are killed in this country more punishment will be given. Let none of you take these bodies down, they must hang till they fall in pieces. We are now friends, and will remain so, unless more white people are killed, when the Governor will send me, and plenty more policemen, and punish much more severely. All are forgiven except those who actually killed the wrecked people, who, if caught, will also be hung. You may go now, but remember this day, and tell what you have seen to your old men, women, and children.[611] [612]
From the earliest days of the colony, it was clear that the role of fronÂtier hangings was to pacify the Indigenous threat to the colonial project. It was a need most pressing for settlers residing on the Eyre Peninsula. The resistance offered in the region by local Indigenous peoples was at its highpoint in the early 1840s—for instance, the population of the major settlement of Port Lincoln fell from 270 in 1840 to 128 in February 1842.
The remaining settlers even began to flirt with the idea of abanÂdoning the township altogether in the worst days of 1842.6 To combat the violence, the Southern Australian demanded that the response at Port Lincoln echo the one taken by O’Halloran at the Coorong in 1840. That is, an execution at the site of the crime where the Indigenous offender’s people were gathered to watch. Moreover, the newspaper thought that, since the perpetrators were difficult to locate, perhaps any member of the â€?tribe’ could serve as the hangman’s example in such turbulent times:[There] are few acquainted with Encounter Bay who would know the good effect which this proper example had. Would not the same judicious step do good at Port Lincoln, on any of a tribe who were known to be at a murder, instead of waiting till the identical one is taken who threw the fatal spear, of which there is as much chance of catching the crow which stole the seed of wheat?[613]
As the colonisation of South Australia’s west coast persisted, hangings were a frequent fixture. In fact, 13 of the 23 Indigenous Australians to be executed in the history of South Australia were for crimes committed on the Eyre Peninsula.[614] These executions were instrumental in calming settler anxieties about the �outrages’ being perpetrated on settler bodies and property. One story emerged after the execution of Kulgulta and Mingulta in 1849 which would have assured many colonists on the Eyre. After �some exertion’ by the police to round up an audience of �natives’ to watch the scene, only the attendance of one Indigenous boy was secured. Still, word of the scene spread quickly:
The boy went away and was next heard of at Mr Dunkin’s station, about five miles to the west of Taunto [the place of execution], where by that time a number of natives had assembled. To them he went through in pantomime the whole scene of death, erecting a mimic gallows and imitating even the last struggles of the murderers.
It is the opinion of the settlers of the district, many more of whom would have been present but that they were in the midst of the shearing, that the example will have a beneficial effect.[615]The support for the public execution of Indigenous offenders at the scene of the crime was long lasting. It was heard again at the colony’s last ever Indigenous hangings in 1861 and 1862 on the west coast of the Eyre Peninsula. For The South Australian Register, it was the â€?expressed belief’ of those living near the troubled district that, â€?the effect of these execuÂtions will be good, and that no other means would have been so effectual in preventing the reoccurrence of such outrages’.[616]
Western Australians were also convinced that the heightened publicity of an Indigenous execution had benefits for settler safety. One newspaper correspondent who claimed to be �well acquainted with the habits of the aborigines’, praised the efficacy of the gallows:
I conscientiously believe... that for every life that is taken by sentence of the law, a dozen is preserved by the terror instilled by the execution of such sentence. When Kanyan was hung [for the murder of another Indigenous man in 1850], I know, from personal experience, that thereby four murders were prevented in the districts of Northam and Toodyay. In the settled districts I believe murder to be nearly at an end, in conseÂquence of the late executions; I mean among aborigines inhabiting the settled districts. Among the bushmen it still exists, and naturally will continue, until the terror of the law shall reach them.[617]
The Perth Gazette agreed with the Inquirer's correspondent on this subject. The following year it wrote that capital punishment had an â€?aweÂinspiring effect’.[618] Through the lesson of the gallows, â€?the aborigines are beginning to feel that life is worth clinging to, and that they will be less given to their death dealing propensities, at least where the influence of our laws is known and experienced’.[619] In 1862 it was said that the example of executions would have, â€?such an effect upon the natives as will in future deter them from again committing acts of hostility upon the settlers’.[620] Reporting on another Indigenous hanging in 1865 the Perth Gazette stated its opinion that: â€?we are, in reality, dealing with people who are but children in reasoning power, moved and swayed by a savage impulse as entirely now as on the day when they first came into contact with the white man thirty-six years ago’.[621]
Western Australia occasionally displayed Indigenous bodies on the frontier after an execution to enhance the deterrent effect.
At the colony’s first legal execution in July 1840, Doodjep and Bunaboy (sometimes written as Barrabong) were hanged at York for the murder of a mother and child.[622] As a lasting warning the bodies were left hanging long afterwards for the local Indigenous population to contemplate the conseÂquences of crime. That said, a disturbing letter to the Editor of the Inquirer appeared two months later detailing the mutilation of the deceased bodies by local Europeans:The ears of one of these unhappy natives have been cut off, and are now preserved in the house of a small farmer in the district. Others have gone out, and fired at the bodies — stretching out their legs by the inserÂtion of sticks between them, and committing other disgusting acts of brutality...[623]
At the aforementioned execution of Kanyan in 1850 the authorities transported his dead body to St. Aubyns where it was â€?hung in chains'.[624] The gibbetting of an Indigenous criminal happened on at least one other occasion. When Yandal and Goologol were hanged in Perth for two separate murders in 1855 their bodies were then transported to York. Displayed in a â€?conspicuous part of the district', it was hoped that the example might quell recent Indigenous-settler violence.[625] In the afterÂmath of South Australia's â€?Maria Massacre' the two dead bodies remained displayed indefinitely on the sands of the Coorong where they were hanged but that was the only time such a practice took place in the colony.[626] The gibbetting of Indigenous criminals in Western Australia occurred long after New South Wales and Tasmania had abolished the practice ofâ€?hanging in chains' by 1837 (see Chapter 2). It was, for the record, never once practised on European offenders in South Australia or Western Australia.
The display of Indigenous bodies after death is the logical extension of the idea that the â€?terror’ of public executions could pacify resisÂtance to colonisation on the frontier. For a people who did not share British culture and language the easily decipherable symbolism of the gallows was seen as a useful aid to the isolated colonist. The practice of hanging Indigenous Australians at the scene of the crime and forcing the offender’s people to watch the execution was designed to teach the traditional owners of the land that British law was now omnipotent. In a frontier unable to be properly policed, the ability to scare compliance into Indigenous people by planting the image of the scaffold in their mind was something to be welcomed rather than banished in the eyes of many.