The Black War: How Tasmania Was Born From the Ashes of the Black Line

The Black War is the bloodiest chapter in the history of Van Diemen’s Land, now Tasmania. The war lasted from 1824 (1826, according to some historians) to 1832 and was punctuated by three main events. All of them took place under the leadership of colonial governor Sir George Arthur (1784-1854) and were aimed at forcing Aboriginal clans into a quick surrender. The first was Arthur’s government notice of November 29, 1826, which authorized colonists to kill Aboriginal people when they threatened or attacked them. The proclamation of martial law in November 1828 was the second and the turning point in the history of Van Diemen’s Land. It directly set the stage for creating the Black Line in 1830.

The Black War is part of the so-called Australian Frontier Wars (now also known as Aboriginal Resistance), the series of conflicts, massacres, ambushes, and sabotage that lasted from 1788, when the First Fleet landed in Botany Bay, to the early 1930s. The Black War is one of the bloodiest chapters in the history of the Australian Frontier Wars. It is also a uniquely Tasmanian product deeply rooted in the pastoral invasion of the island in 1817 that further displaced Aboriginal clans from their ancestral lands.

The war officially began in the mid-1820s and finally came to an end almost ten years later, in 1832. Some historians maintain that it began on November 29, 1826, when Sir George Arthur, then governor of Van Diemen’s Land, issued a government notice authorizing settlers, pastoralists, and convicts to kill Aboriginal people if and when they threatened or attacked their cattle and properties.

The third group comprised two clans of the Oyster Bay Nation, which were active in the Pitt Water area and the Central Midlands. The fourth group, operating around Oyster Bay, was a clan of the North Midlands Nation. Finally, the fifth group brought together different clans of the Ben Lomond and Oyster Bay nations and operated in the Fingal district.

At the very start of the Black War, during the summer of 1826-27, clans of the Oyster Bay Nation joined the Big River and North Midlands nations in demanding that settlers vacate their ancestral kangaroo hunting grounds. It was not just a matter of respect. People were hungry and kangaroos were one of their main sources of food. When their demands went unheard, they launched a massive campaign against the settlers, convicts, and stock keepers stationed on their ancestral lands.

In January 1827, they speared stock-keeper George Roberts. Other settlers were speared and sometimes killed first at Fingal and then at Norfolk Plains. In June 1829 a group of up to 20 Oyster Bay men killed five servants in the Pitt Water area. Before leaving, they took flour from their huts and dug up potatoes. Aboriginal attacks continued throughout the war.

Colonists responded by organizing parties of soldiers, field police, and settlers who often carried out indiscriminate reprisal killings taking Aboriginal groups by surprise at night. In early September 1829, John Batman led an attack against a camp of Ben Lomond People. It was dawn and they were all asleep. He killed 15 of them and then executed two more who had been severely wounded.

The Ben Lomond People carried out a series of attacks in retaliation, but, to put it with Lyndall Ryan, “many more Ben Lomond people must have been killed after these incidents, because after that, they were rarely seen again.”

By the end of 1829, Aboriginal attacks had changed. They had become more sudden, following no apparent logic, and they would take place at any time, day or night. Aboriginal warriors began to use fire consistently, destroying not only the settlers’ huts but also their crops, as happened to the property of John Sherwin on the Clyde River.

Women participated in the attacks too, mainly robbing huts. These are just some of the thousands of attacks led by European settlers and troops against Aboriginal clans in the Settled Districts, and just some of the thousands of attacks led by Aboriginal people against the Europeans settling on their ancestral lands, but they exemplify the level of violence and seemingly never-ending bloodshed that took place in the Settled Districts in this phase of the war. Most of the bloodshed occurred on the lands of the Oyster Bay and Big River nations, especially in the Richmond, Clyde, and Oatlands districts. By the winter of 1829, the region had become a war zone.

Pressured by settlers, in September 1830, George Arthur called on every able-bodied man in the colony to join the military and police forces. Their job was to form a human chain (or Line), systematically scout the whole island, and trap and drive the remaining Big River and Oyster Bay people from the Settled Districts into the Tasman peninsula, the designated place for an Aboriginal mission.

The human chain, or Line, would stretch from Quamby Bluff in the Great Western Tiers to St Patrick’s Head on the East Coast and advance in a pincer movement. About ten percent of Van Diemen’s Land male population participated in the Black Line, making up around 2,200 men and 541 troops. 700 of them were convicts. The Black Line was devised by George Arthur, with the input of civil officers, many of whom were veterans who had served at Waterloo and in India.

There were no more than 200 Aboriginal men and women inside the Line (that is, inside the Settled Districts). They belonged to three different groups, operating in various areas, and led by different leaders. One of the groups comprised four small clusters of people from three nations, the Oyster Bay, Ben Lomond, and North Midlands nations. The second, operating in the Pitt Water area, was made up of about 60 people from the Big River and Oyster Bay nations. Finally, the last group comprised 60 men and women from the Big River Nation. Thanks to their ancestral knowledge of the land, some of them managed to slip across the Line.

What started as a military operation, quickly turned into a large-scale massacre, or, to put it with British historian Charles Esdaile, “a very large scale” Scottish Highlands shooting party.

At the end of October, after several attacks on settlers in the Pitt Water district, Arthur had chevaux de frise erected at strategic points along the Line, which at this point stretched for 50 kilometers (31 miles) from Richmond to Spring Bay. At night, men would light fires on the hills to maintain communication with others.

At the end of November, the operation was called off. Despite George Arthur’s disappointment, the Black Line had the effect of drastically reducing the number of Aboriginal attacks on colonists and their properties. When they did attack, they often plundered huts, stole food, and killed women and children. Eventually, the survivors of the Big River and Oyster Bay nations surrendered in December 1831. Less than one month later, another Oyster Bay clan surrendered. Arthur finally revoked martial law.

In his article, In Consideration of Massacres, Jacques Semelin writes: “If no witness is intended or present, who will be believed? (…) The nature of the event often leads to silence in the immediate aftermath. However, witnesses and perpetrators sometimes speak about massacre long after it is over, when they are immune from prosecution or removed from fear of reprisal from other perpetrators.”

During the Black War, the killings of settlers at the hands of Aboriginal groups were widely and carefully documented. On the contrary, those carried out by settlers against Aboriginal people were not. Just like in mainland Australia, what we know now about these deaths comes from Aboriginal oral histories and the sparse testimonies given decades after the massacres by those who participated in them.

Overall, 1079 people lost their lives during the Black War, between November 1823 and August 1834. 201 of them were colonists. The rest—878—were Aboriginal people from the various nations within and outside the Settled Districts. The Aboriginal: colonial death ratio was 4:1.

In Tasmanian Aborigines, Lyndall Ryan reports that most Aboriginal people were killed “in the war’s second and third phases; that is, between 1 December 1826 and 31 January 1832.” Fewer Aboriginal people were killed in the period when martial law was in force (between November 1828 and January 1832) than during the second phase, that is, between December 1826 and October 1828.

Although the exact numbers won’t ever be determined, estimates suggest that at least 400 Aboriginal people were killed during the second phase of the war. The number, however, is probably much higher.

On the other hand, most of the colonists who died during the Black War were killed during the third phase of the war, between November 1828 and January 1832, precisely during those months when martial law was in force to protect them. The number of colonists living in the Settled Districts had exponentially grown by that time and Aboriginal clans, increasingly hungry and dispossessed, had engaged in more violent measures to defend themselves and their ancestral lands. Over this period, at least 90 colonists were killed and 180 were injured.

Among the dead, ten were women and six were children. The evolution of Tasmania was marked and shaped by the bloodshed that claimed the lives of so many Aboriginal people and European settlers during the Black War. While monuments have been erected to commemorate the settlers and police forces who lost their lives during the conflict, Aboriginal losses have for far too long been ignored.