To the advantages of private opportunities of acquiring a knowledge of
their character were added, latterly, the facilities afforded by my
holding a public appointment in South Australia, in the midst of a
district more densely populated by natives than any in that Colony, where
no settler had ventured to locate, and where, prior to my arrival in
October 1841, frightful scenes of bloodshed, rapine, and hostility
between the natives and parties coming overland with stock, had been of
frequent and very recent occurrence.
As Resident Magistrate of the Murray District, I may almost say, that for
the last three years I have lived with the natives. My duties have
frequently taken me to very great distances up the Murray or the Darling
rivers, when I was generally accompanied only by a single European, or at
most two, and where, if attacked, there was no possibility of my
receiving any human aid. I have gone almost alone among hordes of those
fierce and blood-thirsty savages, as they were then considered, and have
stood singly amongst them in the remote and trackless wilds, when
hundreds were congregated around, without ever receiving the least injury
or insult.
In my first visits to the more distant tribes I found them shy, alarmed,
and suspicious, but soon learning that I had no wish to injure them, they
met me with readiness and confidence. My wishes became their law; they
conceded points to me that they would not have done to their own people,
and on many occasions cheerfully underwent hunger, thirst, and fatigue to
serve me.
Former habits and prejudices in some respects gave way to the influence I
acquired. Tribes that never met or heard of one another before were
brought to mingle in friendly intercourse. Single individuals traversed
over immense distances and through many intervening tribes, which
formerly they never could have attempted to pass, and in accomplishing
this the white man's name alone was the talisman that proved their
safe-guard and protection.
During the whole of the three years I was Resident at Moorunde, not a
single case of serious injury or aggression ever took place on the part
of the natives against the Europeans; and a district, once considered the
wildest and most dangerous, was, when I left it in November 1844, looked
upon as one of the most peaceable and orderly in the province.
Independently of my own personal experience, on the subject of the
Aborigines, I have much pleasure in acknowledging the obligations I am
under to M. Moorhouse, Esq. Protector of Aborigines in Adelaide, for his
valuable assistance, in comparing and discussing the results of our
respective observations, on matters connected with the natives, and for
the obliging manner in which he has furnished me with many of his own
important and well-arranged notes on various points of interest in their
history.
