[“The Native Question”, The West Australian, Monday 24 July 1911, page 3]

THE NATIVE QUESTION.

IN THE FAR NORTH.

WHITES AND BLACKS.

ABORIGINES HUMANELY TREATED.

(By Charles Price Conigrave, F.R.G.S.)

The average Southerner holds a fixed opinion that the white population of the northern portion of the State are in the habit of shamefully ill-treating the aborigines, the latter being supposed to be the most maligned mortals possible to find. It only requires, however, personal study of the question on the spot to learn that the impression held by people upwards of 2,000 miles away is altogether unfair and in some cases entirely at variance with fact. Whilst I do not wish for one moment to be misjudged, and the charge flung at me that I am writing for a purpose, I intend giving my impressions of the native question, and in so doing I only ask that these impressions may be looked upon as being a genuine expression of what I think after several month’s close study and the taking of every opportunity of conversation and discussion with men who live in the north, but who at the same time are perfectly open in an expression of opinion on this wide and far reaching question of the treatment of the aborigines of the north.

Nature’s Law.

What has happened in consequence of white settlement is only exactly on all fours with what occurs in any locality where the white and black races come into contact. One knows the free and flippant use that is often made of the term, “the survival of the fittest,” but the giving way of the northern blacks before the white settlers is in perfect sequence and accord with n unerring law of Nature. It is a law that operates in the genial south as well as in the tropical north, where Nature in all her sternest moods calls forth the self-reliance, the bravery, and the generally excellent traits of character that an observer may notice in the men who have settled and are living in the far north.

I quite realise that I will fall foul of ethnological authorities, one of the foremost of whom Western Australia can boast of, when I say that I look upon the black as a being with feelings akin to the white is at the very outset

The Gravest Cause of Trouble.

The black knows not what gratitude is; his mental capacity cannot understand or grasp its meaning, and in consequence we must for very truth’s sake consider the qhestion from some other standpoint than this. The Australian aborigine, as is well known, comes very low down in the human scale, and in view of that very fact, his disappearance before the all-conquering white has been perhaps comparatively rapid and general. To my mind, it is altogether unfair and untrue to attribute the dispersion of the native races of the north solely to the “bad, wicked squatters,” as I remember hearing one Southerner describe the class of men who are winning from the North some of the riches that are awaiting the brave and self-reliant. That a natural decay sets in whenever black meets white we may, as an instance, consider almost every country that has come under the sway of civilisation with all its many advantages and attendant ills. The American Indian has, broadly speaking, gone for ever, at any rate, that type of him of which the adventure books tell, and many another race has travelled the same path that leads to death and in time the extinction of the race.

Native Missions.

Whilst I do not wish it to be thought that I scoff at the idea of native missions, it may seriously be asked whether they really fulfil the very purpose for which they exist. In such an old-established mission as New Norcia a present day visitor is bound to notice that the aborigines are after all leading a comparatively unnatural existence, and that with all the gratitude and all the kindness which surrounds them the natives of the mission are perhaps removed, but little above their wild brothers. Of course there may be excptions, but speaking in a wide sense missions do not and cannot answer the needs and requirements of the aborigines. I have not vet had an opportunity of visiting the Drysdale River Mission, which was established some three years. ago, but understand that after faithful endeavour on the part of the good Spanish monks the natives of the country are still entirely uninfluenced. The station has on several occasions been attacked by them, and one of the monks speared, and as a reason no sane person could for a moment accuse a Spanish Benedictine monk of being anything but very kindness incarnate.

And not alone missions. Consider the pastoral stations as well. Many a native has been reared from babyhood, looked after and well treated, and given everything that he could wish for, and yet when youth has been reached, what in many cases has been the result? The native boys have

Turned Upon Their Benefactors

and murdered them in cold blood. As an instance there was the late J. J. Durack, of the Denham, who had ever been kind to the blacks, perhaps carrying it to a fault, and yet will be recalled the shocking death that he met with at the hands of a native who had been brought up on the station. The outlawed nigger, “Major,” was just such another as the previously mentioned murderer, although in the latter case he sent to a horrible end many more than one. It was not because these natives were badly treated— they had always had every want supplied. Speak with any of the men who for 25 years some of them have been living in the Kimberleys, and what do we find? The unanimous opinion held that by easy, soft treatment the native will never be improved. And these men, mind you, are just as moral, aye, more so than many a smug critic, who ofttimes with misunderstanding and bitterness sits in judgment on the pioneers of the north. I as a southerner well know the opinion held and expressed by many in Perth, but the fact seems to be entirely forgotten that years ago the southern part of the State, and in fact the whole of the localities where now great cities exist and flourish, were inhabited by aborigines. We at the present day do not have to put up with the danger of going amongst these natives, but the sturdy old pioneers had to with a vengeance, and yet do we as their descendants ever suggest for a moment that they did anything to oust the weaker race from the land of their birth, or act towards them is any way except a right and proper one. All forgetful of the fact that the north is not yet explored, let alone settled, how is it possible to look at the question squarely and with fairness to all concerned.

The Whites Generally are Considerate.

I do not for one moment condone certain acts that have been done, and perhaps that in very isolated cases are being perpetrated at the present time, but I do emphasise the fact that generally speaking the whole of the Whites m the north are considerate, aye more then considerate, to the natives of the country.

Slaughter for Slaughters Sake.

The black naturally takes a huge delight in slaughtering cattle for slaughter’s sake, and probably, as is often the case, sends a defiant message to the losing squatter by a partly civilised brother. The trouble does not come about, nor is it in any way caused, by ill-treatment of the black women. The aborigine holds his female in the lowest esteem. She is the beast of burden in the truest sense of the word, and the murders that have taken place ARE NOT (I speak in capital) in consequence of any mal-treatment of the gins. That men do cohabit in ceratin cases with the women has to be admitted, but before too hasty a judgment is passed on these men let the environment and general conditions be considered. many of these men, highly educated some of them, have for years been away from everything in the way of culture and refinement. Circumstances have thrown those of the opposite sex into close contact with them. In a number of cases such a man’s only companion when sore stricken with tropical fever and hundreds of miles away in the Never-Never is a gine, who tends him in a rough and ready way. Is it altogether surprising then that the inevitable has occurred does occur, and, I make bold to say, will occur yet again? I have spoken to such men and discussed the question with them; and they do not profess to be anything but ordinary mortals with the natures and passions with which we are all either blessed or cursed.

The Critics and the Criticised.

Personally, I hold no brief for the northerners—I only speak truly of my impressions gathered at infinite trouble on the spot, and although some may differ with what I say, the fact yet remains that the average person far away in Perth knows absolutely nothing of northern conditions or of what people who are opening out these great northern spaces on the map have of necessity to put up with. How truly unfair it is for one thousands of miles away to speak of cruelty to the natives. The critic lives in comfort with a street lamp a yard or two distant, a footpath near by where through the night watches a policeman goes on his regular beat—certainly in such a case criticism born of a thorough understanding is hard to expect.

And what is the other side of the picture? A lonely man, miles, weary miles, beyond settlement, struggling to keep awake as he watches the cattle on the night camp until at break of dawn they start on another stage towards the port of shipment. The drover is in the midst of dangers felt and feared, for as is only too often the case, cattle and drovers alike lose their lives at the hands of the natives. Kimberley is a land where a man rolls down at night with a trusty revolver or rifle alongside with as much regularity as a Puritan maid goes through her devotions. He does not do it for show, but because of stern necessity, for he is up against big odds many a time, and he knows it only too well. Possibly, and most probably, I shall be taxed by people down south with

Writing to Whitewash the Settlers.

No such process is required. Were the general run of city folk as clean, as honest, as moral, as the class one meets with in such a land as Kimberley, the world would be a better place to live in. The very fact of a man electing to live in a country where ofttimes his life is at stake, and where discomfort is the ordinary rule, is answer enough to slander. Were he anything but a big-hearted, open, ‘breezy-natured man, no use would be found for him in this great cattle land.

Nicholson Plains Station.

The native question is without the slightest doubt a grave and far-reaching one, and the Government is to be commended for its earnest endeasour to look after the aborigines of the State, but their efforts as regards those of the Far North are, in my humble opinion, in vain. The Government station established some little time since at Nicholson’s Plains is, I fancy, judging by a concensus of opinion, doomed to failure, from the very fact that the natives will not stay on the station, and that cattle-killing on other stations is going on at even a greater rate than before the Government station was founded; and the serious part of the business is that the nigger is being fast educated into having attendance danced upon him, with the inevitable result that he is getting cocky in his manner, and cheeky in his dealing with the whites. There is no gainsaying the fact that fair firmness is the right and proper stand to take up towards the native. Start making a fuss over him, ask him politely to do this and do that, and he instinctively puts you down in his estimation as a superlative species of an ass.

To my mind the aborigine is bound, no matter what prelates say to the contary, to go to the wall before the stronger whites, not because he is ill-treated, but owing to the unalterable law that the fittest will ever survive, whilst the weaker go under. That his going may be lightened in every way possible is my earnest prayer, but at the same time I crave no pardon in asking that no base charges be levelled at men who, in their daily lives, are just as good and clean living as their well-provided-for brethren away down south, where, comparatively speaking, life flows along like a song.

AB notes:

See below Harriet Lenihan’s response to Conigrave’s assertion that

“The black knows not what gratitude is; his mental capacity cannot understand or grasp its meaning,...”