Season, as hard and as well as any white man, at getting
in the harvest for some setlers, and who only received bread, and
sixpence a day, whilst the ordinary labourers would earn at least fifteen
shillings. In many instances, they only receive a scanty allowance of
food, so much so, that some settlers have told me that the natives left
them because they had not enough to eat.
"The evil consequence of this is, that a native finding he can gain as
much by the combined methods of hunting and begging, as he can by
working, naturally prefers the former and much more attractive mode of
procuring subsistence, to the latter one.
"Many of the natives have not only a good idea of the value of money, but
even hoard it up for some particular purpose; several of them have shewn
me their little treasure of a few shillings, and have told me it was
their intention to save more until they had enough to buy a horse, a gun,
or some wished-for article, but their improvidence has always got the
better of their thriftiness, and this sum has eventually been spent in
treating their friends to bread and rice.
"Another evil is the very extraordinary position in which they are placed
with regard to two distinct sets of laws; that is they are allowed to
exercise their own laws upon one another, and are again held amenable to
British law where British subjects are concerned. Thus no protection is
afforded them by the British law against the violence or cruelty of one
of their own race, and the law has only been hitherto known to them as
the means of punishment, but never as a code from which they can claim
protection or benefit.
"The following instances will prove my assertion: In the month of October
1838, I saw early one morning some natives in the public street in Perth,
in the act of murdering a native woman, close to the store of the Messrs.
Habgood: many Europeans were present, amongst others a constable; but
there was no interference on their part until eventually the life of the
woman was saved by the courage of Mr. Brown, a gardener in Perth, who
rushed in amongst the natives, and knocked down the man who was holding
her; she then escaped into the house of the Messrs. Habgood, who treated
the poor creature with the utmost humanity. She was, however, wounded in
several places in the most severe and ghastly manner.
"A letter I received from Mr. A. Bussel, (a settler in the southern part
of the colony,) in May, 1839, shews that the same scenes are enacted all
over it. In this case, their cow-keeper, (the native whose burial is
narrated at p. 330,) was speared by the others. He was at the time the
hired servant of Europeans, performing daily a stated service for them;
yet they slew him in open day-light, without any cause of provocation
being given by him.
"Again, in October, 1838, the sister of a settler in the northern
district, told me that shortly before this period, she had, as a female
servant, a most interesting little native girl, not more than ten or
eleven years of age. This girl had just learned all the duties belonging
to her employment, and was regarded in the family as a most useful
servant, when some native, from a spirit of revenge, murdered this
inoffensive child in the most barbarous manner, close to the house; her
screams were actually heard by the Europeans under whose protection, and
in whose service she was living, but they were not in time to save her
life. This same native had been guilty of many other barbarous murders,
one of which he had committed in the district of the Upper Swan, in the
actual presence of Europeans. In June, 1839, he was still at large,
unmolested, even occasionally visiting Perth.
"Their fondness for the bush and the habits of savage life, is fixed and
perpetuated by the immense boundary placed by circumstances between
themselves and the whites, which no exertions on their part can overpass,
and they consequently relapse into a state of hopeless passive
indifference.
"I will state a remarkable instance of this: - The officers of the Beagle
took away with them a native of the name of Miago, who remained absent
with them for several months. I saw him on the North-west coast, on board
the Beagle, apparently perfectly civilized; he waited at the gun-room
mess, was temperate (never tasting spirits), attentive, cheerful, and
remarkably clean in his person. The next time I saw him was at Swan
River, where he had been left on the return of the Beagle. He was then
again a savage, almost naked, painted all over, and had been concerned in
several murders. Several persons here told me, - "you see the taste for a
savage life was strong in him, and he took to the bush again directly."
Let us pause for a moment and consider.
"Miago, when he was landed, had amongst the white people none who would
be truly friends of his, - they would give him scraps from their table,
but the very outcasts of the whites would not have treated him as an
equal, - they had no sympathy with him, - he could not have married a white
woman, - he had no certain means of subsistence open to him, - he never
could have been either a husband or a father, if he had lived apart from
his own people; - where, amongst the whites, was he to find one who would
have filled for him the place of his black mother, whom he is much
attached to? - what white man would have been his brother? - what white
woman his sister?
