|
|
|
'Many deeds of error' : Response to Windschuttle's Defence of his View of Musquito
Naomi Parry
| I take this voluble response to my review as a backhanded compliment. Why has my review elicited this 7,000 word bombast, when no other work critical of Windschuttle's has gained such careful attention? Have I pushed a few buttons? Fortunately for the reader, Windschuttle has not attacked my footnotes, so we are spared argument about them. Forgive my irreverent tone. As I am accused of wilful omissions and the 'airbrushing' of history, this article deserves serious attention, but I must convey my amusement at this dramatic overkill. |
1
|
|
To begin. I see the historian's task as critically assessing and interpreting source material, so as to craft the insights gained into a cohesive narrative. For those of us who don't own our own presses, these narratives are constrained by word limits. Readers who want to check if I really do know what I am on about can consult a full-length article on Musquito that will be published in Aboriginal History late this year, but suffice to say, my contribution to last year's forum on Windschuttle's work (Labour History, no. 85) was 1,000 words. There was no room for detailed reasoning about source material, and omissions were necessary. However, in endeavouring to prove me wrong, Windschuttle has made even more mistakes, and revealed his own failures in interpreting source material. |
2
|
|
In the first instance, he fails to identify which Musquito we are actually talking about. Saying that I have omitted mention of 'pieces of evidence that pose problems for [my] thesis', Windschuttle recounts the acts of 'internecine violence' committed by a man called Musquito, as reported in The Sydney Gazette between 1803 and 1805. Windschuttle guesses that the death of Musquito, reported by the Gazette in 1806 when Musquito was known to be on Norfolk Island, was a mistake on the part of the newspaper. This report of Musquito's death was indeed greatly exaggerated — or was it? For there is another, far more obvious, explanation. In fact, there were two men called Musquito in Sydney. It was a common nickname, and in the early 1800s one was based in Sydney and known to the townspeople. The other was the warrior of the Hawkesbury. That's why, when the Sydney Gazette reported the first sighting of the warrior, it called him Bush Muschetta. The Oxford English Dictionary says Muschetta is an old world for mosquito, and the use of the word Bush (with a broken typeface so that 'h' looks like 'a') differentiates him from the Sydney fellow. I think it's easy to see that this Sydney Musquito had no relevance to my thesis at all, and Windschuttle has gotten himself into rather a muddle. |
3
|
|
Windschuttle also tries to use Lyndall Ryan and Lloyd Robson as human shields against my charges of sloppy work, saying my capacity for shock is selective. Not at all. Ryan and Robson don't place Musquito at the centre of Tasmanian resistance, but Windschuttle gives him great weight. However in his 'most exhaustive study ever done', Windschuttle failed to gather information that I managed to find in one afternoon in State Records (using, I might add, indexes that did not exist when Robson or Ryan were researching their books). I was shocked, but am gratified that he does, now, appear to have done that basic research. |
4
|
| He then gets bogged down in a laboured argument about the nature of the conflict in the Hawkesbury, but as John Connor's meticulous research has demonstrated that the Hawkesbury resistance was Aboriginal warfare, I will leave that debate alone.1 I am then pilloried for failing to mention a series of accounts alleging that Musquito was transported to Tasmania for the murder of a woman. However, as my forthcoming article explains, Plomley and Willey's view that Musquito was 'falsely named as payback to settle old tribal scores' was a fiction. Although Windschuttle admits those reports were untrue, he still insists that I should have mentioned them. Why bother? |
5
|
|
On it goes. Although I use the term 'nationalist' carefully, I am accused of presenting Musquito as a nationalist leader. However, as the Hawkesbury was inhabited by many groups, such leadership was impossible, and I never argued it was. The fact that some Aborigines gave Musquito up to secure the release of Tedbury only proves that Aborigines made a variety of choices at different times. However Windschuttle appears to hold some antiquated views of Aboriginality. He points to examples of 'internecine violence' as proof that Aborigines were not fighting for their land, but fighting insensibly. Like savages? But such events show that Aborigines continued to pursue their law and way of life, despite the presence of the invader. The use of the terms 'assimilated' and 'civilised' are also used to undermine the sense of Musquito's Aboriginality. He couldn't have been waging any Aboriginal war, because he was not a 'real' Aborigine, or a Tasmanian. Surely Musquito's resumption of an Aboriginal lifestyle in Tasmania indicates some self-identification as an Aborigine? |
6
|
I do not wish to drown readers in the minutiae required to counter Windschuttle's article in full, but I will make the following points:
- Melville's quote 'Many deeds of terror are laid to his charge, which it is impossible for him to have committed, but, doubtlessly, several lives were sacrificed by him' was truncated by me, but only to save space. As I did not try to argue that Musquito was an innocent, the remaining phrase seemed irrelevant, for clearly Melville did say Musquito's crimes were exaggerated.
- My reason for scepticism about Rowcroft's account was not just his ignorance regarding the Osborne murder. As I say in the review, many of the attacks occurred in the country of the Big River people, in the midlands, whereas Musquito was linked with the Oyster Bay people, who remained on the east coast, and were unlikely to be inland in winter. As the colonial authorities did not send the troops Rowcroft asked for, it seems they didn't believe him either.
- Jorgen Jorgenson could not have 'remembered' Musquito and his 'tame mob', as Jorgenson left the Colony in 1804 and did not return until transported there in 1826.
- Windschuttle's allegation that I accuse him of making many errors whilst providing a substantially similar biographical outline is, regrettably, correct. I apologise for the overstatement, but it is a semantic point. My review does show that Fabrication contains many factual errors which do not stand scrutiny.
- It is not 'inconsistent' to say that Musquito was a formidable warrior, yet was only directly involved in one attack in 1824. Real lives are not consistent. My review established that Musquito and his band were not acting alone, and his seven months of violence does not explain a war that continued until the 1830s. Other Tasmanians were active so the outbreak of hostilities cannot be attributed simply to Musquito's bad influence.
- My use of speculative terms 'probably' and 'perhaps' to discuss Musquito's motives is good history, for we have little concrete evidence as to how Musquito felt about anything. If I had been more emphatic I would be flying in the face of the evidence. By the same token, Windschuttle cannot, in the same breath, definitely claim that Musquito 'would not have felt the colonisation of Van Diemen's Land to be dispossession'.
|
7
|
|
Finally, a word on my apparent reluctance 'to privilege the Aboriginal historical voice' by omitting Musquito's broken English, as 'reproduced' by Melville. Windschuttle accepts this quote wholeheartedly, but it is of doubtful provenance. Its first appearance is in Melville's 1835 history, so it cannot be verbatim, but is, at best, recollection recorded 10 years after the event. In any case, the 'quotation' does not contradict my account. We know Musquito was promised a return home, was denied and went bush, got into fights and was pursued by the colonists. It contains no confession of murder, and does not endorse Windschuttle's view that Musquito was a criminally driven bushranger. After all, 'I want all same white fellow he never give' is utterly ambiguous (give what?). And is not 'White fellow soon kill all black fellow' an expression of grief? Even if it's pure resignation, it is a statement, of sorts, about dispossession. |
8
|
|
Naïve empiricism is not possible when we are dealing with such source material. The work of historians remains that of interpreting the evidence, and whether Windschuttle likes it or not, there is plenty of room left for interpretation in Musquito's life, and in the story of Aboriginal Tasmania. |
9
|
|
Endnotes
1. John Connor, The Australian Frontier Wars 1788–1838, UNSW Press, Sydney, 2002, pp. 35–52.
|
Content in the History Cooperative database is intended for personal, noncommercial use only. You may not reproduce, publish, distribute, transmit, participate in the transfer or sale of, modify, create derivative works from, display, or in any way exploit the History Cooperative database in whole or in part without the written permission of the copyright holder.
|