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Contested Histories Forum - Responses

Guerrilla Warrior and Resistance Fighter? The Career of Musquito

Keith Windschuttle

The forum in Labour History no. 85 (November 2003) on my book The Fabrication of Aboriginal History contained no less than five articles, all of them critical of my work. Since I am responding in other places to the articles by Lyndall Ryan and Stuart Macintyre, and since two of the others displayed little familiarity with the text of the book,1 I would like to take this opportunity to debate the one substantive historical issue the forum did address: the question of guerrilla warfare. 1
      Apart from that of genocide, the question of whether the Aborigines responded to British colonisation with guerrilla warfare or wars of resistance is the most important and contentious issue in this debate. Naomi Parry's paper has the virtue of addressing this question directly by focusing on the Sydney Aborigine named Musquito, who she describes as a 'resistance fighter' and an Aboriginal 'nationalist'.2 Musquito has now become a historical figure of some interest, not only in the debate over what happened in Tasmania. In early 2004, he also featured prominently in the National Museum of Australia's exhibition 'Outlawed' on the history of bandits and bushrangers. An examination of his career is a potentially useful case study of the applicability of the concepts of guerrilla warfare and wars of resistance to the early Australian colonies. 2
      To start, it would be helpful to clarify the terminology. Of the three major works on the history of guerrilla warfare,3 Robert Asprey's War in the Shadows has the broadest scope, ranging from ancient world conflicts between Scythians and Persians to the Vietnam War. Included in Asprey's survey are discussions of a number of wars between indigenous people and European colonists in the nineteenth century, including those of Burma, southern Africa, New Zealand and the United States. Asprey's definition of the concept is not confined to certain periods of history or stages of social development. Indeed, he argues some hunter-gatherer people did engage in guerrilla warfare. 'In its simplest form,' he writes, 'it is primitive people dressed in skins and armed with sticks and stones fighting in defence of home and country'. Asprey defines the concept as follows: 'It is a type of warfare characterised by irregular forces fighting small-scale, limited actions, generally in conjunction with a larger political-military strategy, against orthodox forces'.4 In other words, to qualify as guerrilla warfare, a series of actions have to be taken against enemy armed forces and they have to be part of broader military or political objectives. 3
      Both Henry Reynolds in Fate of a Free People and Lyndall Ryan in The Aboriginal Tasmanians argue that Aboriginal assaults on white settlers in Van Diemen's Land amounted to guerrilla warfare.5 In her Labour History article, Naomi Parry agrees that the incidents she discusses in Van Diemen's Land amounted to 'guerrilla style' attempts by Aborigines to prevent the expansion of white settlement.6 She also calls Musquito a 'resistance fighter'. 4
      As far as I am aware, there is no body of historical analysis of this latter expression. Nonetheless, the concept of 'resistance' is well-known from the World War II campaign against the Nazis in occupied Europe. A resistance fighter is someone who, while avoiding direct confrontation, harries occupying forces with an informal campaign that can range from sabotage of supplies and infrastructure to individual and even group killing. The aim of resistance fighters is to kill, injure and demoralise occupying forces and thus help drive them from their country. 5
      Musquito first surfaces in the historical record in the pages of the Sydney Gazette in 1803 and 1804. He was a well-known Aborigine on the streets of Sydney. By 1805 he was named in government orders as the main person responsible for assaults and killings of settlers in the lower Hawkesbury River district in April that year. He was captured and transported to Norfolk Island where he remained until 1813. He was sent to Van Diemen's Land where for most of the next decade he was employed on pastoral stations and as a black tracker. From November 1823 to August 1824 he led a group of Aborigines in a number of assaults on Van Diemen's Land settlers. He was captured, put on trial and executed in February 1825. His career as outlaw thus had two distinct phases, one in Sydney and the other in Van Diemen's Land. 6
   

Musquito in Sydney

 
Parry's article claims she was 'shocked' to find that in Fabrication I did not accompany my account of Musquito's career in Van Diemen's Land with a discussion of what he did in Sydney.7 Her capacity for shock is obviously highly selective. Lyndall Ryan and Lloyd Robson both discuss Musquito's activities in Van Diemen's Land at some length without mentioning Sydney but without apparently causing Parry any surprise.8 It is hardly obligatory for authors to give a full biographical account of every one of their historical characters. Nonetheless, let me take up the issue here, first by reproducing Parry's account of Musquito's career in Sydney and then by examining its credibility. Parry emphasises Musquito's credentials as an opponent of colonisation in the Sydney region:
He was actually a formidable resistance fighter — someone with a very strong sense of 'nationalism', if that word is useful in this context. A Gai-Mariagal man, by 1805 Musquito had become notorious for leading 'outrages' against settlers in the lower Hawkesbury River area, and was named in Government Orders. After Musquito and another man, Bulldog, were apprehended, Governor King pondered what to do with them. Noting the conflict had taken more Aboriginal than white lives, and believing that he could not charge them under British law, King decided to set an example and exiled them, without conviction, to Norfolk Island.9
 		7
      Parry's article does not discuss the detail of any of the Sydney incidents in which Musquito was involved, making it hard for readers to tell whether her description of him as a 'formidable resistance fighter' is accurate or not. She simply gives him that status without further argument. However, she does provide a number of references to his activities in government documents of the day and in the Sydney press. Let me summarise the content of her sources. 8
      The 'outrages' against settlers in which he was allegedly involved took place on the lower Hawkesbury River in April 1805. The district housed what were known as the 'out settlements', a handful of small farms that grew crops and which from time to time fed visiting Aborigines. During one of these visits the settler John Llewellyn and his convict servant were attacked by an Aborigine known as Branch Jack and 20 of his companions. They speared Llewellyn to death and severely wounded his servant. The same day, three miles away, the farm of T. Adlam was attacked by probably the same Aborigines. They caught Adlam and his convict servant in their hut, which they burned to the ground, killing both. At about the same time, the Aborigines made other assaults on settlers, resulting in two stockmen being killed at nearby South Creek.10 A party of local settlers and constables from Parramatta pursued the killers and at Pennant Hills captured the Aborigine named Tedbury. He led them to a cave at North Rocks where they found property stolen from the victims' farms.11 9
      During the pursuit and capture, the party of police and settlers killed six Aborigines. Governor King stationed a military detachment in the district and issued an order banning any other Aborigines from approaching settlers in the vicinity. At the same time he made contact with the Aborigines and offered them a deal. If they would identify and give up the settlers' murderers he would withdraw any military actions against them and allow them to 'come in' to the white settlements again.12 10
      After he was captured, Tedbury named one of the murderers as an Aborigine employed as a tracker with the original police/settler pursuing party.13 His name was not made public but by June a government general order named Musquito as the chief culprit.14 In early July Musquito and his companion Bull Dog were captured, after which Tedbury was released.15 King then called off all military action against the Aborigines. Since many of them were then on the road from the Hawkesbury and elsewhere to meet the governor at Parramatta, he ordered:
NO MOLESTATION whatever is to be offered them in ANY Part of the Colony ... unless any of them should renew their late acts, which is not probable, as a RECONCILIATION will take place with the Natives generally.16
 		11
      Apart from information given by other Aborigines who were friends of Tedbury,17 there was nothing to specifically identify Musquito with any of the lower Hawkesbury assaults. He was not named by any of the surviving white witnesses as a party to any of the incidents. The only Aborigines individually identified by white witnesses were Branch Jack, Tedbury and a man named Busa Muschetta, who met the police/settler party at North Rocks. The Sydney Gazette reported this last incident as follows: 'This party fell in with a small cluster, one of whom, called Busa Muschetta, saluted them in good English, and declaring a determination to continue their rapacities, made off'.18 12
      In his 1979 history of the demise of the Sydney tribes, Keith Willey claims that Busa Muschetta and Musquito were the same man.19 This is speculation on Willey's part, based on nothing more than the rough similarity of the name in this one sentence in the Sydney Gazette. It is unlikely the newspaper made a mistake since in all previous stories about Musquito it had published since 1803, the newspaper had identified him clearly by the name 'Musquito'.20 Even if it were true they were the same man, however, this still provides little support for Naomi Parry's case. This sentence is the sole record we have of what might possibly have been the motives of Musquito, or someone like him, at the time. It provides no link between the 1805 assaults and any campaign of resistance to white settlement, nor to any campaign in favour of Aboriginal nationalism. All we know about these assaults is that some Aborigines killed settlers and stole their property. To read into this some kind of nationalist resistance movement is to go beyond the evidence. The notion is unsupported by any surviving official documents or press reports of the time, let alone by any of the statements made by the Aboriginal people themselves. 13
      Nor does Parry mention the colonists' opinion of the causes of the lower Hawkesbury assaults, even though the sources she cites contain this very information. Judge Advocate Richard Atkins reviewed the evidence and gave King an opinion on the legality of the case, advising against prosecuting the captured Aborigines. He discussed one incident that had apparently led to the spate of violence.
Dunn was only defending his own property from common Depredators, who, at the time he wounded one of them, were in the act of Stealing and carrying away that property, and resistance against them the Laws justified.21
 Governor King said he believed the outbreak was the result of a comparatively minor incident.
The least Check on the part of the Settler is an injury never to be forgiven, and from thence arise those disagreements and the bad consequences attending the partial Broils between the Natives and distant Settlers.22
 These explanations for the Aborigines' actions did not indicate the colonial authorities thought they faced anything resembling a nationalist uprising. It is unlikely to have been a major resistance movement if its opponents were unaware of its existence.		 14
      What is also notable about Parry's article is that it omits several pieces of evidence that pose problems for her thesis. Musquito figures in a number of reports in the Sydney Gazette between 1803 and 1806, which she does not mention and does not footnote. These were stories about him engaging in violent conflict with other Aborigines on the streets of Sydney. 15
      The report of the first of these incidents at Pitt's Row in October 1803 portrays a ritual spearing or payback punishment for offences Musquito committed against other Aborigines. The Sydney Gazette said he and another Aboriginal man were being punished for their 'assassination' of two others, who they had speared to death. Musquito was a given a shield with which to defend himself and then 64 spears 'all thrown with rancour and malignity' were launched at him. The 65th spear entered the calf of his leg.23 The second incident in December 1804 involved a ritual spearing of another Aboriginal man at Farm Cove but later that night, while asleep, Musquito was speared in the arm by an unknown assailant.24 In the third incident in January 1805, the press portrayed him joining a long-running series of brawls between different Aboriginal factions on the harbour shore where he was seen 'discharging random spears in every direction'.25 16
      The Sydney Gazette also reported in January 1806 a fight in the settlement between Musquito and the kinsmen of an Aboriginal youth he had killed. The story said Musquito eventually received a mortal spear wound in front of the general hospital. He was admitted by the principal surgeon of the hospital but died there six days later.26 This last story, however, cannot be true. In August 1805, Governor King had sent him and Bull Dog to Norfolk Island to serve a term of imprisonment for an offence for which they were never charged or convicted.27 In its report of the 1806 fight, the Sydney Gazette obviously named the wrong man. 17
      For some reason she does not explain, Parry's article does not mention any of this internecine violence. This is a surprising omission since a number of other historians who have surveyed Musquito's career have made much of it. 18
      On his reading of the evidence, Keith Willey concludes that Musquito was not actually involved in any of the attacks on settlers on the lower Hawkesbury in 1805. Rather, he was falsely accused by his tribal enemies as part of a process of payback and revenge. Willey also says Musquito suffered payback punishments because he had raped and murdered Aboriginal women. Willey writes:
Some doubt exists whether he and his companion, Bulldog, had been the true leaders of the uprising, since known troublemakers like Branch Jack and Woglomigh had been left unmolested to fight — and die — another day. Possibly the true reason why Mosquito and Bulldog were chosen as scapegoats may lie in allegations that they had raped and murdered one or more Aboriginal women — acts which demanded vengeance under the tribe's own laws.28
 The most authoritative of the Tasmanian historians, Brian Plomley, accepts the same version of events. He says that Musquito and Bull Dog were apparently handed over to the authorities by their own tribe because they were involved in the killing of some native women. 'There had also been trouble over the killing of settlers, and so Musquito and Bulldog may have been given up by their tribe to avert a more general punishment.'29		 19
      The story that Musquito had murdered Aboriginal women was documented in an article written for a London magazine by Reverend William Horton in 1823 after he visited Van Diemen's Land. Part of this article was reproduced in 1870 in the book The Last of the Tasmanians by James Bonwick, who treats Horton's story as credible. This was because Bonwick had personally spoken to a man named Elliott, who had been in Van Diemen's Land since 1815 and who knew Musquito when he was an employee of the pastoralist Edward Lord. Elliott told Bonwick that Musquito had killed Black Hannah, one of his Tasmanian Aboriginal mistresses, in a fit of passion. Bonwick also claimed Musquito later murdered another wife, Gooseberry, in the Government Domain at Hobart.30 20
      The story that Musquito was guilty of murdering women in both Sydney and Van Diemen's Land was also reported in two other nineteenth century histories. In his work written in the 1830s, the ex-convict and adventurer Jorgen Jorgenson said Musquito was convicted in Sydney for the murder of a woman. Jorgenson also said he had killed the Tasmanian woman Gooseberry of Oyster Bay in 1821.31 John West's 1852 history of Tasmania repeats the story that Musquito was transported from Sydney to Van Diemen's Land for the murder of a woman.32 In his 1973 book The Last of the Tasmanians, David Davies reproduces Bonwick's version of the killing of Aboriginal women.33 21
      Parry's article, however, makes no mention of any of these accusations. It is hard to believe she was unaware of them. Indeed, her own article discusses Reverend Horton's visit to Van Diemen's Land and his familiarity with Musquito. Even if she does not accept them, she was obliged to at least discuss these allegations. But because this chain of internecine spearing, brawling and killing would have tainted her picture of a heroic Aborigine fighting the whites on behalf of his own people, she does not mention it. 22
      Now, it is definitely untrue that Musquito was transported from Sydney for killing a woman. Governor King's note clearly indicates he was sent to Norfolk Island because King believed he was involved in 'the late outrages', that is, the assaults on the lower Hawkesbury.34 Nonetheless, the spearings Musquito endured in 1803 and 1804 were almost certainly provoked by his killing of at least two Sydney Aborigines, one of whom might have been a woman. 23
      On the balance of the available evidence, Willey and Plomley are most likely right about the events of 1805. Musquito probably had nothing to do with the attacks on the lower Hawkesbury. Tedbury and other Aborigines falsely named him, partly because he was helping the police track the real culprits and partly as payback to settle old tribal scores. But even if this is wrong, Parry's thesis is in no better shape. There is nothing in any of the accounts we have of the assaults on settlers in 1805 to indicate they were part of a campaign of indigenous resistance or Aboriginal nationalism. 24
      In other words, Parry's picture of Musquito as a resistance fighter patrolling the frontiers of the Sydney settlement, harassing the white invaders, has little credibility. Instead, Musquito was most likely a partly assimilated Aborigine, sometimes employed by the police as a tracker of other Aborigines. He was well enough known on the streets of Sydney to be personally identified in stories in the newspaper. He also had enough enemies among the other Sydney Aborigines to make him an unlikely champion of any nationalist cause on their behalf. This is a far more plausible scenario and fits the available evidence much more closely than Parry's 'resistance fighter' thesis, for which there is no credible evidence on either the British or the Aboriginal side of the Sydney frontier. 25
   

Musquito in Van Diemen's Land

 
After he was sent to Norfolk Island, Musquito remained there until 1813 when he was transported to Van Diemen's Land. Parry's article agrees with some points in my account of Musquito's career in Van Diemen's Land but disagrees with most of them. She paraphrases my case as follows:
[Musquito] was sent to Tasmania in 1813 as a blacktracker where he lived among the whites in Hobart, becoming so 'integrated' that he went on a cattle-buying expedition to Mauritius with Edward Lord in 1818. When Musquito captured the bushranger Michael Howe the convicts shunned him so he asked to be sent to Sydney. The passage was not approved, so Musquito fell in with one of the 'tame mobs' near Hobart. When he later joined the Oyster Bay Tribe he recruited the Tasmanian Aborigine, Black Jack, as his 'chief accomplice' and lured away Black Tom (Kickerterpoller), a Tasmanian raised in a Hobart household. In 1823 the gang murdered two stock-keepers at Grindstone Bay. Of the seven attacks recorded in 1824, all bar one were supposedly the work of this band. In August 1824 Musquito was apprehended. He was hanged in February 1825 for the Grindstone Bay murders, with Black Jack, who was guilty of another killing. Their actions were not 'nationalistic', but were simply 'crimes' for which execution was just punishment.35
 Parry's article asserts that most of these claims are false. She says: 'Yet, of these "facts" the only "truths" are that Musquito tracked Howe, joined the Tasmanian Aborigines, and died on the gallows with Black Jack.' 'The rest,' she says 'are serious errors'.36 That is, every detail above, apart from the three she excludes, is not just wrong but seriously wrong.		 26
      This is a strange claim for Parry to make because in her own article she relies upon several of these very same details herself. Parry agrees that Musquito tracked and helped capture Michael Howe but lists as one of my serious errors the claim that the convicts shunned him so that he asked to be sent to Sydney. Yet she records herself the following information:
In October 1817, Lieutenant Governor Sorell advised Macquarie that he was sending Musquito, Black Mary and a convict named Gill (McGill) to Port Jackson because their assistance in hunting bushrangers had made them 'odious' to the convicts at Port Dalrymple.37
 Similarly, she agrees that the request for Musquito to return to Sydney was not approved. 'Yet the three stayed behind,' she writes.38 She also acknowledges the truth of another of my points by stating that Musquito 'joined one of the "tame gangs" around the Pitt Water'.39 Parry's principal source here is an 1823 article by Reverend William Horton, which described this 'tame mob' as a group of semi-assimilated Aborigines, expelled from their own society for transgressing tribal laws and left to eke out a living on the fringes of white settlement.40 Though it uses different sources, this is the same description Fabrication gives this group.41 Parry's claim that I am wrong to say Black Jack and Black Tom were accomplices of Musquito is belied by her own account that Musquito and Black Jack were jointly tried in December 1824 for the murder of the stockman William Hollyoak in an incident at Grindstone Bay.42 She also fails to explain why the Hobart Town Gazette would have described Black Tom in July 1824 as 'the notorious companion of Musquito' or why James Bonwick would have thought Tom joined Musquito's tame mob in 1822.43		 27
      Others in my catalogue of alleged errors are simple points of fact for which there is good local evidence and which no historian but Parry has ever denied. Parry agrees that Musquito arrived in Van Diemen's Land in 1813 but she says he was sent to Launceston rather than Hobart.44 He may have landed at the northern settlement but both Jorgen Jorgenson and James Bonwick say he was initially employed not in Launceston but as an assigned servant to Edward Kimberley at his property at Antill Ponds, near Oatlands in the central plains.45 Some time later, certainly some years before 1818, he became an employee of the pastoralist Edward Lord at Pitt Water, which was part of the southern settlement commonly described as 'Hobart' by most historians of this period. After he joined the tame mob described by Reverend Horton, he still frequented the town of Hobart. Jorgenson remembered him there in 1821: 'The artful knave Mosquito would go round the town begging for bread for the Blacks, and then exchange it for tobacco, which he again sold for rum'.46 Parry's claim that I am in error in claiming Musquito was apprehended in August 1824 is similarly mistaken. Both the Hobart Town Gazette and the diary of Reverend Robert Knopwood report he was wounded and captured at Grindstone Bay and brought into Hobart on 12 August 1834. Knopwood visited him in hospital on 13 August.47 28
      Some other alleged errors are either trivial or irrelevant disagreements. Parry agrees that Musquito was at one time an employee of Edward Lord and she acknowledges that in February 1818 Lord advertised he intended to take Musquito to Mauritius. However, she claims Lord eventually left without him.48Fabrication cites two shipping news reports in the Hobart Town Gazette which said Lord was taking two of his servants, Musquito and James Brown, to Mauritius to buy cattle.49 Parry says a departure index from the port of Hobart does not record Musquito having left as originally advertised.50 While it is possible the departure index was incomplete and did not record servants, the important point at question here is not whether Musquito actually went to Mauritius or not (although Lyndall Ryan joins me in believing he did);51 the real issue is that he was so well regarded and integrated into the settler community that his employer would even contemplate taking him on such a journey. By 1818 he almost certainly fitted the description given him by the colonial surveyor James Calder of 'a civilised black'.52 Similarly, Parry says I am in error in claiming Musquito was tried for murder of two stockkeepers at Grindstone Bay since he was legally tried only for 'aiding and abetting' the murder of one of the two men killed. This is technically correct but is a trivial detail since the evidence from the survivor of the Grindstone Bay attack clearly identified Musquito as leader of the gang and chief instigator of the violence, a point Parry does not dispute.53 29
      Parry's only serious empirical disagreement with my record of events concerns the number of assaults on settlers made by Musquito and his gang in 1824. She says I claim he was responsible for six of the 11 Aboriginal assaults on colonists that year. Fabrication actually records that Musquito was involved in 11 of the 12 assaults in 1824.54 Whatever my figure, Parry disputes it. She writes:
The only attack in which Musquito was definitely involved in 1824 was a non-fatal spearing at Pitt Water in August. This means Musquito and Black Tom committed only one each of the eleven-recorded attacks in that year.55
 If this is true, then I am not the only one who is mistaken. Lyndall Ryan says Musquito's gang killed three stockkeepers in 1824, two in March and one in July.56 Brian Plomley records four attacks on settlers led by Musquito, two fatal, and all of them in June 1824.57 John West records five attacks by Musquito on settlers in 1824, three of them fatal.58 If I am in serious error about the perpetrator of these attacks, then so are these authors, although Parry declines to direct the same charge at them. Lieutenant-Governor Arthur was himself so convinced of Musquito's track record as a bushranger that he offered a reward for his capture. This inducement eventually led a local settler and his Aboriginal servant to track and arrest him.		 30
      The only reason Parry gives for discounting what amounts to a solid body of evidence is that she disbelieves a report by the Bothwell Magistrate Charles Rowcroft, who identified Musquito's gang as responsible for five of the incidents in his local area. Parry claims Rowcroft's account was not reliable because of his description of the injuries received in one incident by one woman, Mrs Osborne, who was assaulted at the same time her husband was killed by Black Tom. Parry claims Rowcroft was unfamiliar with this particular incident. But the only evidence she offers is that he initially reported Mrs Osborne's life was 'despaired of', whereas she actually recovered from her wounds.59 This is hardly a compelling reason to discard Rowcroft's account of this murder, let alone his report about Musquito's other assaults in his district. In any case, Parry's doubt is misplaced. Osborne's neighbour, Robert Jones, who questioned the injured woman, confirmed that Osborne was killed by the 'tame mob, a mob of half-civilised blacks, such as have had much intercourse with white men ... The mob consisted of the blacks who were in the habit of visiting Hobarton and getting provisions and other things there'.60 The only Aboriginal band fitting that description in June 1824 was the tame mob led by Musquito. Parry does not comment on the four other assaults attributed to Musquito by Rowcroft, so offers nothing to question their authenticity. 31
      Moreover, Rowcroft's report was far from being alone. James Scott, the Bothwell surgeon, and Thomas Salmon, the chief constable at Oatlands, both of whom were in the colony in 1824 and who knew the two affected districts at first hand, gave evidence to the 1830 Broughton committee into Aboriginal affairs. They said Musquito was responsible for 'many murders' and 'depredations' that year.61 The Hobart chaplain, Reverend Robert Knopwood, agreed. He wrote in his diary in August 1824: 'Musquito the Sydney black, who has speared and killed so many stockkeepers has at last been taken and lodged in gaol'.62 Parry says that the newspaper editor Henry Melville tempered such reports by observing: 'Many deeds of terror are laid to Musquito's charge, which it is impossible for him to have committed'. Parry fails, however, to finish the sentence that Melville wrote. In Melville's original text, the word 'committed' is followed not by a full stop but by a comma, after which he continued: 'but, doubtlessly, several lives were sacrificed by him'.63 In her determination to discredit my case, Parry airbrushed these words to avoid informing readers that her own source actually disagreed with her. 32
      If Parry wants to argue Musquito was only involved in one of the 11 incidents in 1824, she still leaves six of these assaults — that is, those not mentioned in Rowcroft's report — unaccounted for. Four of these reports refer to stories in the Hobart Town Gazette between March and August 1824, a fifth refers to a deposition by Robert Jones, and a sixth to the trial and conviction of Musquito's accomplice, Black Jack, for the murder of Patrick McCarthy. As noted above, Jones's deposition confirms Rowcroft's account of the murder of Matthew Osborne and also describes a second killing of a man named Bamber by the same mob. Of the four newspaper stories, one positively identified Musquito as the man who enticed a stock-keeper from his hut at Pitt Water then speared him in the back.64 A second reported the spearing of a convict servant at Old Beach on Hobart's outskirts, saying 'it does not appear that Musquito or Black Jack were seen with this party, though there is reason to believe they must have been near the spot'.65 The other two newspaper reports are of the killing of stockmen at Blue Hills in March and at Swan Port in July. Even though the newspaper did not specifically name them, Lyndall Ryan attributes both these last incidents to Musquito and his gang.66 It is possible she is wrong about the incident in March but she is right about the July killing where a stockman employed by the Swan Port pastoralist George Meredith was the victim. Aborigines who came to a nearby whaling station shortly afterwards named Musquito as one of the killers.67 33
      To summarise: of the 11 assaults on settlers that Fabrication attributes to Musquito's gang in 1824, he was positively identified in five, his gang was positively identified in two, his chief accomplice was positively identified in one, and other Aborigines implicated him in one. Only two of the 11 are subject to reasonable doubt. In one of these, the spearing at Old Beach, the Hobart newspaper suspected him of responsibility, though without offering any proof. In the other, the killing at Blue Hills, Lyndall Ryan named him the guilty party. Perhaps only the last of these is really dubious since Ryan's source did not specifically identify Musquito or his gang. Yet all 11 observations except one, the spearing at Pitt Water, are dismissed by Parry out of hand. 34
      Moreover, in making this case, Parry is apparently unaware she has immersed herself deep in inconsistency. Her overall aim in the article is to portray Musquito as a formidable warrior. He was not only a nationalist resistance fighter in Sydney, she claims, but he maintained the same stance in Van Diemen's Land when he joined other Aborigines in a war to halt the expansion of white settlement. But if he was only involved in one non-fatal spearing in 1824, it could hardly be accurate to describe him as a warrior of the resistance. Nonetheless, here is Parry's explanation of his motives:
It does not take much effort to understand that the Aborigines had reason to prevent the further expansion of white settlement by attacking outposts, guerrilla style. Musquito was stranded in a strange country, but he probably recognised the patterns of dispossession he had seen in the Hawkesbury district. Perhaps, after the Governor's betrayal, he felt he had nothing to lose by joining the Oyster Bay people on their journey to war.68
 As Parry betrays in her own terminology — 'it does not take much effort to understand', 'probably', 'perhaps' — her account of his motivations is speculative. She is trying to deduce Musquito's motives from her own interpretation of his deeds, without the benefit of any direct evidence from the man himself. In the absence of such evidence, however, one could just as plausibly deduce the opposite conclusion. As an Aborigine from Sydney, Musquito was in what was to him a foreign country. He had no kin, linguistic or ethnic relationship with the Tasmanian Aborigines and no tribal lands there to defend. Hence he would not have felt the colonisation of Van Diemen's Land to be dispossession, any more than did the Maoris, Tahitians, Hawaiians and other indigenous people of the Pacific employed in the settlement at the same time.		 35
      Fortunately, there is evidence available that goes some way to resolving this issue. It was published in a work well known to Parry. One of the books she cites twice in her article is Henry Melville's A History of Van Diemen's Land.69 But she fails to say that Melville reproduced a long statement in Musquito's own words explaining his animosity to the settlers and giving his own explanation for his actions. This statement, made to a person Melville describes as a 'former benefactor', is reproduced here in full.
I stop wit white fellow, learn to like blanket, clothes, bakky, rum, bread, all same white fellow: white fellow giv'd' me. By and by Gubernor send me catch bushranger — promise me plenty clothes, and send me back Sydney, my own country: I catch him, Gubernor tell too much a lie, never send me. I knockit about camp, prisoner no like me then, givet me nothing, call me b——y hangman nose. I knock one fellow down, give waddie, constable take me. I then walk away in bush. I get along wid mob, go all about beg some give it bread, blanket: some tak't away my 'gin': that make a fight: mob rob the hut: some one tell Gubernor: all white fellow want catch me, shoot me, 'pose he see. I want all same white fellow he never give, mob make a rush, stock-keeper shoot plenty, mob spear some. Dat de way me no come all same your house. Never like see Gubernor any more. White fellow soon kill all black fellow. You good fellow, mob no kill you.70
 While this makes it clear that Musquito and his gang were involved in a series of violent clashes with settlers and stockmen, with losses on both sides, his motives were not those attributed to him by Parry. His statement contains no mention of any concern about the expansion of white settlement, no mention of Aboriginal dispossession, no mention of a journey to war. Even though this statement is not quoted in Fabrication, it is further endorsement of my book's explanation of Musquito's actions provided from a range of other evidence. Musquito felt the Lieutenant-Governor had broken his promise about the reward he would receive for tracking Michael Howe, he had clashed with the convict lower orders of Hobart because of his role in delivering the bushranger to the hangman, and he had violent disputes with other whites over women. The statement speaks not of a tribal Aborigine defending his country against the invaders but of a largely assimilated Aborigine with grievances about his treatment as a member of white society and who, as a result, had decided to live by robbery: 'I want all same white fellow he never give ...' The statement provides plausible reasons why someone like Musquito would take up the life of a bushranger. He and his followers in the tame mob emulated a number of like-minded convict and ex-convict outlaws who took to the bush at the same time and lived by pillaging the property of outlying settlers.71		 36
      Because of its importance in explaining Musquito's motivations and because it contradicts her own account, the onus was on Parry to address this statement. If she does not want to accept it as accurate or complete, she should have made some effort to explain why. Instead, she does not mention its existence. She might have overlooked this statement when reading Melville's book but it is more likely she knew of it but declined to mention it because of the problems it posed for her wider thesis. Either way, it is an indefensible omission.72 37
      A number of my critics, including those in the Labour History forum, have accused me of ignoring the voice of Aboriginal people. This accusation is false. Fabrication contains many statements from Aborigines themselves about their actions, their motives and their fate after colonisation.73 All their words were recorded by white observers, of course, since the Aborigines were illiterate, but the whites were usually those who were sympathetic to the Aboriginal position, such as George Augustus Robinson and Henry Melville. Yet when this testimony contradicts their own theses, as it does in this case, it is critics like Parry who decline to privilege the Aboriginal historical voice. 38
   

Tribal Aborigines and Guerrilla Warfare

 
If Musquito cannot be described as a guerrilla warrior or resistance fighter, what of the actions by tribal Aborigines, beyond the reach of British colonial sovereignty, who attacked settlers and stockmen in Van Diemen's Land from 1827 to 1831? In Fabrication I argued that these actions did not amount to guerrilla warfare. They did not involve attacks on British troops and there was no evidence that their assaults on settlers and stockmen were part of any strategy beyond the immediate aim of robbery and murder. Hence they did not fit the definition of guerrilla warfare offered by Robert Asprey or any other author who has surveyed the literature on the subject. 39
      Fabrication especially criticised Henry Reynolds' claim that Lieutenant-Governor Arthur recognized from his experience in the Spanish War against Napoleon that the Aborigines were using the tactic of guerrilla warfare. This could not have been true since in his military career Arthur never served in Spain.74 The full text of the statement cited by Reynolds shows Arthur was talking not about troops coming under attack by guerrillas but of Aborigines robbing and assaulting unarmed shepherds on remote outstations.75 In fact, Arthur himself gave a quite different account of the nature of the violence perpetrated by the Aborigines.
It is doubtless very distressing that so many murders have been committed by the Natives upon their [the settlers'] stockmen, but there is no decided combined movement among the Native tribes, nor, although cunning and artful in the extreme, any such systematic warfare exhibited by any of them as need excite the least apprehension in the Government, for the blacks, however large their number, have never yet ventured to attack a party consisting of even three armed men.76
 		40
      In the entire history of Tasmania, only one serving soldier, a private of the 63rdRegiment stationed at George Meredith's farm at Oyster Bay in 1830, was ever killed by Aborigines.77 This fact alone makes it very hard to argue that what happened in Tasmania amounted to guerrilla war. It certainly falls far short of the conflict waged by the New Zealand Maoris, the American Indians and the other indigenous people examined in Robert Asprey's survey. For instance, in the second half of 1863 alone, Maori guerrilla warriors killed 50 British soldiers. They attacked British redoubts manned by up to 250 troops and for three months pinned down an entire imperial army of 4000 men. There was nothing that resembled this in Van Diemen's Land. Nor does the evidence of the 'outrages' committed by Sydney Aborigines in 1805 measure up in the slightest way. 41
      John Connor in his book The Australian Frontier Wars tries to overcome this obvious problem by redefining the nature of warfare. He claims that the Australian Aborigines devised a new tactic. They discovered that attempts to destroy the settlers' crops and animals were the most effective means of attack. Hence raids on farmhouses and farms should be recognised as what Connor calls 'a new form of warfare: Australian frontier warfare'.78 But even this manoeuvre does not rescue the story in Van Diemen's Land. As Brian Plomley's 1992 survey of the evidence demonstrates, of the 726 incidents of clashes between Aborigines and settlers in that colony between 1824 and 1831, only 35 of them — less than five per cent — were in the category 'assaults on stocks, crops and stacks destroyed'.79 The rest were attacks on individual settlers and their households, incidents that I characterise as either revenge, assault, robbery or murder. In any case, Connor's attempt to redefine warfare so that it fits contemporary academic interpretations is too transparent a sleight of hand to take seriously. It cannot make what happened in Australia resemble any more closely the cases of genuine warfare waged by indigenous people in New Zealand, North America, South Africa and the Pacific Islands. 42
      Although confined to two specific regions, the case made here has implications for both historical terminology and methodology. Unless historians can provide some evidence that the Aborigines had motives beyond the immediate ones of robbery and assault, unless they can show that the Aborigines engaged in at least some combat with the troops of the colonists, and unless they can find unequivocal evidence of political or military objectives behind Aboriginal actions, they cannot credibly describe frontier conflict as either guerrilla warfare or a war of resistance. To date, no one has established that any of these criteria apply to the conflict in Van Diemen's Land. 43
      Elsewhere in Australia the situation was in some places very different. For instance, the encounter known as 'the Battle of Pinjarra', south of Perth in 1834, was not the ambush of a helpless band of Aborigines that some historians claim but a genuine battle in which the Aborigines stood their ground and attacked British troops, killing one and wounding another.80 Issues like this have to be decided on a case-by-case basis, not deduced from some overarching political paradigm. 44
      Despite the many accusations of bad faith in which the current debate has been shrouded, the question of how the Aborigines responded to British settlement, whether it was with warfare or welcome or something in between, is an empirical one. It should be decided on the historical evidence alone, not by appeals to the prevailing political consensus, which is designed more to serve the interests of the present than to uncover the truth about the past. 45


Endnotes

1.  Liz Wilson acknowledged her views were based not on a reading of the book but on a public debate she attended between Henry Reynolds and myself. Vicki Greaves had read at least some of the book but apparently not very much of it. She claims my account of the killings at Risdon Cove in May 1804 'ignored' the testimony of the convict Edward White. Had she bothered to read the chapter on Risdon Cove, she would have found that White's testimony is discussed in more length and detail (pp. 22–4) than that of any other witness. Most of her other comments either misinterpret my case or attribute to me views I have never expressed, such as support for Social Darwinism.

2.  Naomi Parry, 'Many Deeds of Terror: Windschuttle and Musquito', Labour History, no. 85, November 2003, p. 208.

3.  Robert Asprey, War in the Shadows: the Guerrilla in History, Vols I and II, Doubleday, New York, 1975; Robert Taber, The War of the Flea: Guerrilla Warfare in Theory and Practice, Lyle Stuart, New York, 1965, Walter Laqueur, Guerrilla: a Historical and Critical Study, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1977.

4.  Asprey, War in the Shadows, p. xi.

5.  Henry Reynolds, Fate of a Free People, Penguin, Ringwood, 1995, p. 66; Lyndall Ryan, The Aboriginal Tasmanians, 2nd edn., Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1996, p. 109.

6.  Parry, 'Many Deeds of Terror', p. 209.

7. Ibid., p. 208.

8.  Ryan, Aboriginal Tasmanians, pp. 79, 87–8, 101; Lloyd Robson, A History of Tasmania, Volume One, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1983, pp. 50, 101, 211, 217.

9.  Parry, 'Many Deeds of Terror', p. 208.

10.  King to Camden, 30 April 1805, Historical Records of Australia, I, V, pp. 306–7.

11. Sydney Gazette, 21 April 1805, 19 May 1805.

12.  King to Camden, 20 July 1805, Historical Records of Australia, I, V, p. 497.

13. Sydney Gazette, 19 May 1805.

14.  General order published Sydney Gazette, 9 June 1805.

15. Sydney Gazette, 7 July 1805, 4 August 1805. Bull Dog is mentioned in King to Piper, 18 August 1805, NSW Colonial Secretary's correspondence 1788–1825, Reel 6040, p. 41.

16.  King, General Order, published Sydney Gazette, 7 July 1805.

17. Sydney Gazette, 4 August 1805.

18. Ibid., 19 May 1805.

19.  Keith Willey, When the Sky Fell Down: the Destruction of the Tribes of the Sydney Region 1788–1850s, Collins, Sydney, 1979, p. 167. Willey mistakenly transcribed the name as Bush Muschetta.

20. Sydney Gazette, 16 October 1803, 23 December 1804, 13 January 1805.

21.  Atkins to King, 8 July 1805, Historical Records of Australia, I, V, p. 503.

22.  King to Camden, 30 April 1805, Historical Records of Australia, I, V, p. 307.

23. Sydney Gazette, 16 October 1803.

24. Ibid., 23 December 1804.

25. Ibid., 13 January 1805.

26. Ibid., 12 January 1806, 19 January 1806.

27.  King to Piper, 18 August 1805, NSW Colonial Secretary's correspondence 1788–1825, Reel 6040, p. 41. The Norfolk Island muster of 1911 recorded him present that year: Carol Baxter (ed.), General Musters of NSW, Norfolk Island and Van Diemen's Land 1811, ABGR [Australian Biographical and Genealogical Record.], Sydney, 1987, pp. 94 and 152.

28.  Willey, When the Sky Fell Down, p. 180.

29.  N.J.B. Plomley (ed.), Friendly Mission: the Tasmanian Journals and Papers of George Augustus Robinson 1829–1834, Tasmanian Historical Research Association, Hobart, 1966, p. 445, n. 106.

30.  James Bonwick, The Last of the Tasmanians, Sampson, Low, Son and Marsten, London, 1870, pp. 93–4. Although Bonwick dates the London magazine article as 1822, both Lloyd Robson and Parry date Horton's correspondence as 1823: Robson, History of Tasmania, Volume One, pp. 50, 575.

31.  N. J. B. Plomley (ed.), Jorgen Jorgenson and the Aborigines of Van Diemen's Land, Blubber Head Press, Hobart, 1991, p. 74.

32.  John West, The History of Tasmania (1852), ed. A.G.L. Shaw, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1971, p. 267.

33.  David Davies, The Last of the Tasmanians, Shakespeare Head Press, Sydney, 1973, pp. 102–3.

34.  King to Piper, 18 August 1805, NSW Colonial Secretary's correspondence 1788–1825, Reel 6040, p. 41.

35.  Parry, 'Many Deeds of Terror', p. 208.

36. Ibid., p. 208.

37. Ibid., p. 208.

38. Ibid., p. 208.

39. Ibid., p. 209.

40.  Horton's article is quoted and paraphrased in Bonwick, Last of the Tasmanians, pp. 93–4.

41.  Keith Windschuttle, The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, Volume One: Van Diemen's Land 1803–1847, Macleay Press, Sydney, p. 67.

42.  Parry, 'Many Deeds of Terror', p. 210.

43. Hobart Town Gazette, 16 July 1824; Bonwick, Last of the Tasmanians, pp. 95–6.

44.  Parry, 'Many Deeds of Terror', p. 208.

45.  Bonwick, Last of the Tasmanians, p. 92; Plomley (ed.), Jorgen Jorgenson, p. 74.

46.  Plomley (ed.), Jorgen Jorgenson, p. 74

47. Hobart Town Gazette, 20 August 1824; The Diary of the Reverend Robert Knopwood 1803–1838, ed. Mary Nicholls, Tasmanian Historical Research Association, Hobart, 1977, 12–13 August 1824, p. 429.

48.  Parry, 'Many Deeds of Terror', p. 208.

49. Hobart Town Gazette, 14 February 1818 and 21 February 1818.

50.  Parry, 'Many Deeds of Terror', p. 208.

51.  Ryan, Aboriginal Tasmanians, p. 79.

52.  J. E. Calder, The Native Tribes of Tasmania, (1875) facsimile edn., Fullers Bookshop, Hobart, 1972, p. 47.

53.  Melville, History of Van Diemen's Land, pp. 38–9.

54.  Parry, 'Many Deeds of Terror', p. 209; Windschuttle, Fabrication, pp 68–9. Parry's mistake comes from citing a compilation of Brian Plomley's tables, which I reproduce, rather than my own text.

55.  Parry, 'Many Deeds of Terror', p. 210.

56.  Ryan, Aboriginal Tasmanians, p. 87.

57.  N.J.B. Plomley, The Aboriginal/Settler Clash in Van Diemen's Land 1803–1831, Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston, 1992, p. 59.

58.  John West, The History of Tasmania (1852), ed. A.G.L. Shaw, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1971, p. 268.

59.  Parry, 'Many Deeds of Terror', p. 210.

60.  Sworn deposition by Robert Jones, 15 March 1830, reproduced in Plomley (ed.), Jorgen Jorgenson, p. 94.

61.  Archives Office of Tasmania, CSO 1/323/7578, pp. 315, 337, both recorded in Windschuttle, Fabrication, pp. 329, 336.

62.  Knopwood, Diary, 12 August 1824, p. 429.

63.  Melville, History of Van Diemen's Land, p. 32.

64. Hobart Town Gazette, 6 August 1824.

65. Ibid., 2 April 1824. Parry's article quotes the final part of this sentence but leaves out the words recorded here.

66.  Ryan, Aboriginal Tasmanians, p. 87.

67.  He was named for the killing of Meredith's stockman Robert Gay. Musquito was implicated by Aborigines encountered at Meredith's whaling station, The Fisheries, according to the diary of Meredith's neighbour, Adam Amos, 3 August 1824: cited by Lois Nyman, The East Coasters: the Early Pioneering History of the East Coast of Tasmania, Regal Publications, Launceston, 1990, p. 40.

68.  Parry, 'Many Deeds of Terror', p. 209.

69.  Cited by Parry, 'Many Deeds of Terror', footnotes 18 and 20, p. 212.

70.  Melville, History of Van Diemen's Land, p. 40n.

71.  Robson, History of Tasmania, Volume I, pp. 141–4.

72.  As well as Melville's book, the statement is reproduced in Clive Turnbull, Black War: the Extermination of the Tasmanian Aborigines (1948), Sun Books, Melbourne, 1974, p. 63. In Fabrication, I discuss another statement from Melville's book attributed to Black Tom. I published it in full but said I was sceptical of its authenticity because the speech was recorded in heavy American Negro vernacular, whereas Tom's white foster mother said 'he spoke English perfectly', as he would have since he was brought up from early childhood in a white middle class household in Hobart (Fabrication, p. 101). If Parry wanted to quarrel with Melville's version of Musquito's statement, she should have acted in a similarly open fashion, publishing the statement in full and giving reasons for her disagreement.

73.  It even provides a table of evidence given by Aborigines about their subjection to white violence, in which every case where an Aboriginal eyewitness claims to have seen one of his compatriots killed is accepted as plausible, unless there is other evidence to doubt it: Fabrication pp. 282, 288–94.

74.  A.G.L. Shaw, Sir George Arthur, Bart, 1784–1854, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, Vic., 1980, pp. 5–16.

75.  Windschuttle, Fabrication, pp. 96–8.

76.  Arthur to Murray, 4 November 1828, British Parliamentary Papers, Colonies, Australia, 4, p. 181.

77.  Windschuttle, Fabrication, p. 97. Two other possible but implausible military deaths are recorded in Fabrication p. 177.

78.  John Connor, The Australian Frontier Wars 1788–1838, UNSW Press, Sydney, 2002, pp. 20–1.

79.  Plomley, Aboriginal/Settler Clash, data summarised in Windschuttle, Fabrication, Table 4.1, p. 85.

80.  Keith Windschuttle, 'The Myth of Frontier Massacres of Australian History, Part I: The Invention of Massacre Stories', Quadrant, October 2000, pp. 17–19.

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