11    Dispossessing the Aborigines

Inescapably, William Cox and other landowners became involved in conflicts with the Aborigines, when as settlers they moved into territory which was traditionally occupied by the ‘natives’ and on the natural fruits of which they depended for their living. This had a second dimension for settlers who, like Cox, were magistrates responsible for the security of their districts and had to deal with attacks by Aborigines – and who often could have done more to prevent settler outrages against them. The fighting was brutal, and reprisals by Aborigines were savage and indiscriminate.

The potential for conflict had been recognized at the start by Governor Phillip, who strove to understand the Aborigines. He had been ordered to establish contact with them and, in the words of the Australian Dictionary of Biography, ‘proposed to treat the Aboriginals kindly and to establish harmonious relations with them’ in accordance with his orders and, undoubtedly, with his nature.1 He placed two native men, Colebe and Bennelong – the latter to feature prominently in early accounts of the colony – in his personal care. Any among the very few settlers who interfered with the Aborigines’ traditional pursuits were liable to heavy punishment.

However, the Governor was eventually forced to take punitive action against the natives after he was himself speared in the arm at a meeting with some at Manly Cove. It is unclear whether he realized that the spear used against him was not a fearsome killing spear, studded with sharp stones, which could not be withdrawn without inflicting great and fatal damage, but was of a lighter kind that gave a warning wound. It says much for his character that the attack did not cause him to abandon his policy. But even the small area of 3400 acres (1392 ha) which Phillip alienated for white settlement was sufficient to cause conflict. In consequence he ordered plots to be set out side by side, rather than with ten acre spaces between them as planned, since the Aborigines could hide therein. This illustrates that, even with the best of white intentions, conflict became inevitable as settlement expanded. Archibald Bell much later told Commissioner Bigge that the natives ‘are naturally mild, inoffensive and indolent, but pertubaceous in seeking revenge which is indiscriminately visited upon the first white man they meet with’.2 William was to experience the results of this at first hand in 1816.

Thus from the beginning a central question regarding the acquisition of land in the colony was how the government and the settlers saw semi-nomadically occupied territory. The legal concept of terra nullius – land belonging to no one – had not yet been formulated. The historical commentator Inga Clendinnen points out that: ‘During those first years … only a handful of First Fleet observers began to grasp the great fact of the Australians’ [Aborigines’] intimate dependence on what the British continued to think of as a “wild”, indeed empty, land’.³ It has been argued that ‘there was no legal doctrine maintaining that uninhabited land could be regarded as ownerless’ and that ‘early legal interpretation was supported by government policy which recognized indigenous title to the land’.⁴

There is little in the recorded attitudes of a succession of governors to support that claim. Their aim was to see the colony’s lands developed. King did tell Bligh that he considered the Aborigines to be ‘the real Proprietors of the Soil’ and tried to protect their ‘persons and property’.⁵ Macquarie wrote to Bathurst in October 1814: ‘Those Natives who dwell Near Sydney or other principal Settlements, live in a State of perfect Peace, Friendliness and Sociality with the Settlers … it seems only to require the fostering Hand of Time … to bring these poor Un-enlightened people into an important Degree of Civilisation.’⁶ Before he left he told the Secretary of State that New South Wales had ‘been converted from a barren Wilderness of Woods into a thriving British colony’. Lord Bathurst’s land regulations of 1825 contained ‘no mention of the Aboriginal people … it continued to be assumed that they had no prior claim on the land’.7

This was William Cox’s basic attitude. Although he did express sympathy on occasion for the Aborigines’ predicament in becoming dependent on settlers for food, as the result of having been dispossessed, none of his recorded remarks support the idea that they had any right to the land. Nor was it understood then, which is fully recognized today, that in Richard Broome’s words: ‘Aboriginals viewed land symbolically as the land created by great ancestors … labour [thus] reflected the deepest meanings of life and one’s place in it’.⁸ Their labour, as William saw it when employing them at Mulgoa, did however deserve fair pay and treatment, not the exploitation to which they were often subject when given work.

There had been incidents on the Hawkesbury long before William’s time, including settlers gratuitously killing Aborigines. The new farms at what was than known as Mulgrave Place in the 1790s had increasingly restricted the access of the indigenous Darug people to waterways and traditional sources of food. These included wild yams, honey, tree grubs, fish, eels, birds such as quail, and of course kangaroos. Governor Hunter had refused to punish the few taken captive, recognizing them as victims, and King was the first governor to meet Darug elders to discuss grievances caused by settlement. Although they asked King to be able to use the ungranted areas around the rivers, this proved impossible in practice due to settlement pressures and the Aborigines responded by seizing settlers’ corn and provisions and killing the settlers themselves in most brutal ways. It was left to the farmer to decide when he could reasonably shoot at Aboriginal raiding parties to protect his own and his family’s lives.⁹ Grace Karskens comments that ‘the Hawkesbury was in a state of war for years, from 1799 to 1805, while violence broke out again on the Nepean to the south in 1814–16’.¹⁰

On the Hawkesbury there was a particularly savage outbreak in late May 1816. The bodies of three white men were discovered, ‘badly disfigured’, and probably killed by Aborigines.11 William received instructions from the Governor dated 1 July and 6 July and as a result made military dispositions to deal with the problem. He informed Macquarie on 11 July of his preliminary dispositions:

went to Capt Forrests’s farm to get a place for Sgt Broadfoot’s party to sleep in case they came that evening … Finding no shelter they went to the left bank of the Grose and have now a position a little below Mr Bell’s in an empty house that commands the ridge leading to the roads north and west, as well as the Grose.

William’s writing was as neat and controlled as ever. He folded his letter three times so as to fit into an ‘envelope’ made of one piece of paper about six inches wide and four inches deep, marked ‘H M Service’. Macquarie recorded down the side ‘’Recd 12 July 16. Answered 13 ditto.’ The original is in the Mitchell Library. The text continues explaining an incident that was typical:

I have now the honour of reporting to Your Excellency that I formed a party on Saturday last to go in quest of the Hoschen [sic] Natives and sent two Constables and two friendly natives as guides [names given] and on Monday morning they were joined by Mr Luttrell and seven other men making 12 … On Tuesday they proceeded towards Singleton’s mile and in the evening information was brought to Mr Bell’s that the Natives had been to Joseph Hobson’s farm and murdered him. I received this information at one o’clock on Tuesday morning and after directing [the] Sgt and his men to get the track of the Natives, I went the same route with the Sergeant, but they lost track of them and I deemed it prudent to drop the pursuit.

On the Wednesday morning the coroner’s inquest on the body was held. William attended and ‘explained Your Excellency’s determination as to the four Natives … and gave directions who to give the alarm to in case they saw or heard of any Natives. I also settled my plan with the Sergeant.’ Macquarie replied on Friday 19 July, in haste judging from the handwriting, accepting William’s advice.12 It appears that the natives were not caught.

William explained after the inquest that ‘Hobson was a very hard working, quiet man and always on the best of terms with the Natives. His death wound was on the head and he was also stripped quite naked. He had removed his family after the murder of the 2 stockmen.’ He further told Macquarie that ‘The Natives here appear so determined on mischief that very prompt measures are necessary or the Settlers and Stockmen will be murdered in future’. The stockmen are likely to have been convicts. The Bell mentioned was presumably Archibald Bell, who from 1812 to 1818 commanded a detachment of the 73rd Regiment at Windsor and had a property named Belmont at Richmond. It seems odd that he was not involved directly in the operation, although this was evidently a job for the magistrate (Bell was appointed as one in 1820, with a salary and a house). Very probably he had the murder of Hobson in mind when he told Bigge that the natives took revenge on the first white man they encountered.

During 1816 a number of orders were sent out by the Colonial Secretary regarding ‘Aboriginal activities’, notably on 9 May when a proclamation was circulated to all JPs about ‘Aboriginal hostility’ and on 26 July ‘respecting the sanguinary Disposition and Outrages still manifested by the black Natives of the Colony’. On 19 October the need for protection against the natives was certified and on 2 November a circular was sent concerning the cessation of hostilities and the treatment of natives, which was also sent to the Aborigines themselves.¹³ This marked the end of that series of conflicts. The precise cause of the 1816 conflict was not identified, although there had been a brutal and unnecessary attack on an Aboriginal boy by settlers. But provocation was seen completely differently by settlers and Aborigines, as Bell explained.

These events may well have conditioned William’s attitudes at Bathurst in 1824, detailed below. This author’s reading of events, taken amongst other sources from records of meetings, is that when conflict became inevitable on a larger scale around Bathurst in the next decade, William’s view was again pragmatic: effectively a version of stick and carrot, of attack followed by negotiation. Indeed the 1816 incidents took place when he was already dividing his time between the Hawkesbury and Bathurst, where he was the commandant. What took place at Bathurst has become extremely controversial to historians, even if it was not at the time.

The Aborigines’ predicament was sometimes recognized by settlers. Thus William was one of 15 men, headed by Sir John Jamison and including the lieutenant governor and the judges, who petitioned Macquarie on 24 August 1819 about the formation of a ‘Society for promoting Christian knowledge amongst the Aborigines’. It is not clear if this was related to the Benevolent Society of New South Wales, of which Macquarie was patron in 1818.14 In their petition the residents said that their long experience in the ‘Interior’ made them aware of the ‘important necessity’ of doing something to raise the Natives from their ‘degraded and very wretched state … not only on principles of justice but of humanity to the Natives, who have been deprived of great parts of their means of subsistence by our clearing the lands of its timber, by which they were [provided with?] the greater part of their animals’ food’.¹⁵ The petitioners referred to the Native Institution of 1814, founded by Macquarie, which had educated Aboriginal children, although William was not involved in this. The institution only educated a half dozen boys and half a dozen girls, who one by one deserted it, so that it failed. The land question does not seem to have been pursued by the society, possibly because of the speed with which events developed.

By the early 1820s matters had become far from happy west of the mountains. Aborigines were often killed or taken hostage without any effective trial resulting, although Saxe Bannister, the attorney general in 1824, recorded that Macquarie had once caused a white man to be executed for murdering a native.¹⁶ The simple truth was that the Bathurst plains were not expansive and fertile enough to accommodate two hugely different cultures without hostility. Inevitably, William’s sons became involved in attempts to recover stock stolen from their increasing landholdings. On 7 February 1822 William reported from Clarendon to Governor Brisbane that ‘my son Mr Henry Cox is this instant returned from Bathurst … with information that the Natives have driven away the persons who was [sic] in charge of the stock at the river “Cudgegong”’. They had let the cattle out of the yards and got possession of the sheep.17 There had been no killings.

On this occasion George Cox had asked the sergeant at Bathurst to allow four soldiers to return with him and deal with the problem, but the sergeant had refused. ‘My son [George] was therefore driven to the necessity of arming 5 or 6 persons … and set off with them.’ William’s letter continued and he asked the Governor for soldiers ‘to protect our people and property’.¹⁸ The soldiers do not appear to have been sent, while George’s action would have been spontaneous. To have obtained orders from his father would have taken ten days, Clarendon being five days ride on horseback. But that he did sometimes receive orders from his father was shown by William’s evidence to Bigge in November 1819, when he told the Commissioner that soon after Lawson’s appointment as superintendent: ‘I wrote to my son Mr George Cox directing him to withdraw our Flocks from a place called Swallow Creek … to be shorn’.¹⁹ The transmission of orders from father to son, if completely normal at the time, has since become an element in the 1824 historians’ controversy.

In 1823 William wrote to Goulburn, the Colonial Secretary, saying that he had received a letter from George who ‘had been to visit our distant cattle stations at Mudgee and I have the pleasure to say the natives had continued friendly with our people’. He had conversations with about 25 of them on ‘the late disturbances’ and urged them to go Bathurst to talk further, which they agreed to do. William concluded this letter by hoping ‘that no more deaths will occur in retaliation, it being of so much importance to the public’.²⁰ This episode can be construed as showing William approving of violence to recover stolen cattle, but also wanting conciliation to be effective. This reading of it is confirmed by meetings that took place after the situation had deteriorated in 1824 and seems to be more characteristic of the older generation of settlers than the younger.

After the conflict at Bathurst worsened William Cox chaired a meeting of stockholders, including Samuel Marsden and William Lawson, at Sydney on 3 June 1824. They sent a memorial to Brisbane ‘representing the late Calamitous events at Bathurst and praying for assistance’. Their memorial was signed by William Cox and said:

Your Memorialists having learnt with feelings of horror and consternation the late disastrous accounts from Bathurst and in which no fewer than seven individuals, the servants of your Memorialists have been barbarously murdered and the other Shepherds and stockmen compelled … to desert their charges and leave the entire property of your Memorialists unprotected.

They asked for ‘prompt and effective assistance’.21

A month later, on 16 July, at a meeting of magistrates called by the Governor and attended by William, Lawson and seven others, similar views were expressed, but if anything more strongly. They considered that since the previous November ‘the black natives in the Districts about Bathurst, from some unhappy cause, not as yet ascertainable, have been incited by some of the chiefs or others to assail at different periods the huts in occupation by the stockmen of the numerous stock proprietors … to kill sheep and cattle’. These ‘Native attacks’ were ‘acting upon a determined spirit, rather of general plunder than personal revenge’ and ‘measures of strong, sufficient and immediate resistance’ were needed. ‘A large military force’ should bring the natives ‘to a state of due subjection’, although the magistrates also envisaged that ‘Upon the happy restoration of a harmless spirit, the Chiefs of each Tribe have given to them some personal Badge of distinct and be victualled at the Public Expense’ and be occasionally given supplies such as blankets.²²

This approach, advanced by senior magistrates, explains both the highly charged atmosphere at Bathurst during the ‘Black War’ and much that happened during it, with a younger generation of impatient settlers on the spot, where talk of ‘massacres’ became widespread. Furthermore, William’s stock overseer at Bathurst was the 34-year-old life sentence convict Theophilus Chamberlain, who was noted for his brutality to Aborigines.23 The stock overseers in pastoral areas enjoyed considerable independence, even though they were usually convicts, and their freedom of action was boosted by their having horses.²⁴ From the sequence of events it is evident that Chamberlain exercised his own discretion to a very considerable extent and that he was mounted. William, whilst legally responsible for this employee, was not in a position to control him from Clarendon, although George was.

The commandant at Bathurst was now a Major Morisset, who had succeeded Lawson in 1823.²⁵ He reported on 25 June to the Colonial Secretary that Chamberlain, following up the spearing of cattle, had encountered a party of natives who would have killed him had he not been mounted.²⁶ Morisset responded by sending a detachment under a sergeant to arrest ‘a mob of black natives’, but the soldiers failed to find them.²⁷ In July he asked for mounted troops to pursue Aborigines, which was refused. When Bathurst eventually heard of it he was so angered at the idea of using cavalry against natives that Morisset was relieved of his command in 1825.²⁸ The events which followed included what amounted to a massacre by Chamberlain in August.

The circumstances were that the overseer and his men had pursued the thieves of cattle belonging to Cox and Lawson. The whites had been set upon, whereupon they dismounted, tied their horses together, opened fire and then charged the Aborigines with the bayonet, killing three at the first skirmish and sixteen at the end.²⁹ It seems extraordinary that they were allowed to have bayonets, as if they were soldiers. John Connor records that about a week before Morisset’s expedition of September 1824 passed through Mudgee:

a man named Chamberlane (sic)… and two stockmen killed sixteen Wiradjuri, probably all men … for a small group like the ‘Mudgee tribe’, it was a high percentage casualty rate for a single action … followed in swift succession by the total disruption to food gathering caused by Morisset’s parties [it] would have convinced the Wiradjuri that negotiating peace was the only option to ensure their survival.30

This they began to do in October. The delay was because ‘they were clans … if a major issue had to be discussed runners would be sent out to other clans for a national conference’.³¹

Articles in the Sydney Gazette show that there was much general talk about ‘extermination’ of the Aborigines during 1824. In October it was reported that the district was ‘engaged in an exterminating war’.³² Earlier, on 24 June a young Lawson son wrote to his brother Nelson, who was in England, saying of the Aborigines: ‘We have now commenced hostilities against them, in consequence of their killing a great number of shepherds and stockmen, but afraid we shall never exterminate them’.³³ An accusation was made by a missionary against William Cox that he had advocated the same. The accusation has been frequently repeated and discussed academically, although the alleged incident does not seem to have aroused indignation at the time, if it took place at all. For the purposes of this biography, it is necessary to relate the full events, so far as they are known, although they are commonplace to historians of the period.

In June 1824 the missionary L. E. Threlkeld, as quoted by the author Niel Gunson, stated: ‘A gentleman (Mr Cox) of large property recommended at a Publick meeting … that the best measure towards the blacks would be to “Shoot them all and manure the ground with them”’. That the ‘Mr Cox’ was of large property implies that he was William, while Gunson identifies him positively in his edition of Threlkeld’s Reminiscences.³⁴ No date was specified for this remark.³⁵ Furthermore, the missionary was not there himself; although the attorney-general, Saxe Bannister, was.³⁶ Yet there is no mention of the incident in Bannister’s own account of the colony.³⁷ Leaving aside Threlkeld’s long delay in reporting the alleged speech, the missionary was given to exaggeration. Marsden later felt obliged to write him in 1826, referring to correspondence with the London Missionary Society, saying ‘I cannot but observe that your language is very strong; and I should apprehend, would give unnecessary pain to the Society’.³⁸ Both the episode and the attribution must be treated with caution, especially since no first name was given by Threlkeld for the ‘Mr Cox’.

Despite its vagueness, Threlkeld’s accusation is taken up by Jan Kociumbas in her Oxford History of Australia, with a series of often inaccurate references. She writes:

In spite of the views of land takers like Meares, Lawson, Wentworth or Cox, who either overtly or implicitly advocated the slaughtering of Aboriginal families, not all those devoted to the new concept of the colonies as a place where people were replaced by sheep believed that this should imply a policy of extermination.39

The names she quotes are of the younger generation and in a footnote she adds: ‘For killings on behalf of George Cox of Clarendon see Sydney Gazette of 30 September 1824, for Cox’s advocacy of total extermination, N. Gunson’. In fact, the 30 September issue of the Gazette reads ‘Mr Chamberlane came into Bathurst, to report the above circumstances [his killings] to Mr George Cox, who took him to the Commandant’, not that George ordered killings.⁴⁰ Nor did George Cox live at Clarendon.⁴¹ Equally, in attacking William Lawson, Kociumbas quotes the letter of 14 June.⁴² But Lawson’s son wrote it. Kociumbas has failed to distinguish between the two different generations.

The earlier 1822 incident does show that George Cox did not hesitate to send armed men after Aboriginal stock thieves. However, pursuit of stock thieves was a different matter to advocating wholesale slaughter, let alone carrying it out. George, although then young and aware of his on-the-spot authority, was later referred to in the Sydney Morning Herald as having ‘consideration for the wants and infirmities of others’, while his later letters reveal a modest and understanding character.⁴³ This does not, of course, mean that he did not make the remark, which was in keeping with the general feeling. But nor does it mean that he personally killed Aborigines, as the stock overseer did. This is not to pretend that the Coxes, or others, were saints, although they did remove the overseer in 1825. As regards Lawson Snr, Eric Rolls cites an instance, on 22 December 1823, when he brought to trial a white man who had shot a native and says: ‘William Lawson got along with the Aborigines better than most men … when he retired as commandant … the Aborigines still turned to him for advice’.44

The records of senior officials’ meetings quoted earlier make it clear that the authorities pursued a policy of strong action combined with conciliation. What actually followed was Brisbane’s belated declaration of martial law on 3 November, which legitimized killings.⁴⁵ But Wiradjuri attacks had ceased during October, as recorded above, and in November their leaders came to Bathurst to ask for peace. Brisbane revoked martial law on 11 December 1824. He was recalled the following year, partly because of Bathurst’s displeasure at his handling of that situation.

Was William Cox in the area at that time at all? He chaired the meetings in Sydney on 3 June and 16 July, when his recorded remarks fell far short of recommending ‘manuring the ground’ with bodies. He usually avoided public controversy. He was well known for his absences from Bathurst and it could take five or six days on horseback to get there from Sydney. On 6 November 1818 it had taken him from a Monday until a Saturday.⁴⁶ Finally, in November 1824, Brisbane submitted his name to the Secretary of State as a potential member of the new Colonial Council. Would he have done so if William had been so uncharacteristically rash in public?⁴⁷

It is true that William was now 60 and was inclined to be irascible and that his herds had suffered repeatedly at the hands of the Aborigines. But his letter of 7 December 1823 to Goulburn had emphasized that he encouraged remaining friendly with ‘the natives’, although this would have been consistent with the ‘violence and conciliation’ approach. He also employed Aborigines himself. Even Gunson concedes self-contradictorily that: ‘Apart from his callous attitude to the Aboriginals, he was regarded as a man of unimpeachable integrity’.⁴⁸

It seems more likely that, if the offending remark was made at all, George Cox made it, although Kociumbas’ Gazette quotation about his giving orders is simply wrong. A reasonable conclusion is that, as the conflict between Aborigines and settlers came to a head, the younger ones, at least, believed that the native inhabitants had to be driven out before they murdered more settlers (not to mention the convicts they killed). The authorities colluded in this, or encouraged it. The view of an older settler, Archibald Bell, had been expressed in his evidence to Bigge in 1820, quoted earlier. He had also explained that when cheated by a white settler over payment for work, ‘this caused retaliation … [Aborigines were] tenacious in seeking revenge’.49 Even if it was the result of provocation, their reprisals were seen by settlers as increasingly intolerable. After the ‘Black War’ at Bathurst, more emphasis began to be laid on the prevention of conflict, without a great deal of effect. Vengeance against Aborigines who took cattle continued and they suffered all sorts of outrage from squatter woolgrowers in later years.⁵⁰ Furthermore the concept of an exterminating war continued, although it has been argued that the words ‘exterminate’ and ‘extirpate’ had become familiar in colonial conversation, with reference to indigenous people, during the 1820s and 1830s … originally meaning nothing more than ‘banish’ or ‘excommunicate’.

The Sydney Gazette of 21 May 1827 reported the trial of Lieutenant Nathaniel Lowe of the 40th Regiment ‘for the wilful murder of one Jackey Jackey: an Aboriginal native’.⁵¹ Lowe had ordered him to be shot. Lowe was defended by Dr Wardell (W. C. Wentworth was the junior counsel, who ‘followed on the same side’). Jackey had killed a white man and it was argued that he ‘could not be amenable to the English law because he could not comprehend the form’. He had ‘merely done that which was recognized to be lawful, according to the notions of the tribe’. Wardell went on to say that ‘even if the natives committed no offence, but possessed that propensity to eat human flesh, they would justly be proscribed, that an exterminating war carried on against them would be justifiable’. Lieutenant Lowe was found not guilty.

The Aborigines did not suffer outrage from William. He had earlier employed a few as guides when building the Blue Mountains road and in 1826 he had a number as farm workers at Mulgoa, despite earlier bloody attacks on that farm. At Mulgoa conflict had become inevitable over the usage of the Nepean River, especially during times of drought. In 1811 Robert Luttrell, the violent son of the surgeon Edward Luttrell, was killed during a fight with the Mulgowie tribe. In 1826 Peter Cunningham, the naval surgeon, met ‘a gentleman at Mulgoa … who had … thirty acres of wheat reaped by a party of them … in fourteen days, as well [done] as by whites … they were fed and paid a regular price’, whereas others disliked working for whites as they were being cheated by small convict settlers.52 Karskens identifies this gentleman as William, who was happy with them.⁵³

This was a much more positive approach than that of, for example, Archibald Bell. When asked by Bigge if they had ‘shewn themselves capable of performing any European labour’, Bell replied, ‘I have seen some few reap and one or two hold the plough for amusement’.⁵⁴ With William it was the familiar story of his understanding how to motivate men, in this case by treating them fairly. The Aborigines around Mulgoa, some of whom settled on his farm, became known as the Mulgowie, but by the 1840s they were, if not actually extinct, no longer identifiable as a tribe. Later on, Broome writes, ‘Aboriginal people provided farm labour on many properties in New South Wales’.⁵⁵