On First Setting Foot In The Country, We Were Inclined To Hold The Spears
Of The Natives Very Cheap.
Fatal experience has, however, convinced us,
that the wound inflicted by this weapon is not a trivial one; and that
the skill of the Indians in throwing it, is far from despicable.
Besides
more than a dozen convicts who have unaccountably disappeared, we know that
two, who were employed as rush cutters up the harbour, were
(from what cause we are yet ignorant) most dreadfully mangled and butchered
by the natives. A spear had passed entirely through the thickest part
of the body of one of them, though a very robust man, and the skull
of the other was beaten in. Their tools were taken away, but some provisions
which they had with them at the time of the murder, and their cloaths,
were left untouched. In addition to this misfortune, two more convicts,
who were peaceably engaged in picking of greens, on a spot very remote
from that where their comrades suffered, were unawares attacked by a party
of Indians, and before they could effect their escape, one of them was pierced
by a spear in the hip, after which they knocked him down, and plundered
his cloaths. The poor wretch, though dreadfully wounded, made shift
to crawl off, but his companion was carried away by these barbarians,
and his fate doubtful, until a soldier, a few days afterwards, picked up
his jacket and hat in a native's hut, the latter pierced through by a spear.
We have found that these spears are not made invariably alike, some of them
being barbed like a fish gig, and others simply pointed. In repairing them
they are no less dexterous than in throwing them. A broken one being given
by a gentleman to an Indian, he instantly snatched up an oyster-shell,
and converted it with his teeth into a tool with which he presently fashioned
the spear, and rendered it fit for use: in performing this operation,
the sole of his foot served him as a work-board. Nor are their weapons
of offence confined to the spear only, for they have besides long wooden
swords, shaped like a sabre, capable of inflicting a mortal wound, and clubs
of an immense size. Small targets, made of the bark of trees, are likewise
now and then to be seen among them.
From circumstances which have been observed, we have sometimes been inclined
to believe these people at war with each other. They have more than once
been seen assembled, as if bent on an expedition. An officer one day met
fourteen of them marching along in a regular Indian file through the woods,
each man armed with a spear in his right hand, and a large stone in his left:
at their head appeared a chief, who was distinguished by being painted.
Though in the proportion of five to one of our people they passed peaceably on.
That their skill in throwing the spear sometimes enables them to kill
the kangaroo we have no right to doubt, as a long splinter of this weapon
was taken out of the thigh of one of these animals, over which the flesh
had completely closed; but we have never discovered that they have any method
of ensnaring them, or that they know any other beasts but the kangaroo and dog.
Whatever animal is shewn them, a dog excepted, they call kangaroo:
a strong presumption that the wild animals of the country are very few.
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