Tasmanians

“ A writer in the Christian Recorder for 1824 gives no flattering picture of Tasmanians when he says, "Though they have now been accustomed for several years to behold the superior comforts and pursuits of civilized men, they have not advanced one step from their original barbarism. All that they have imbibed from us is a smattering of our language, and a fondness for tobacco and spirituous liquors." But there are a few instances where the Tasmanians have been brought up from infancy in the homes of colonists, and have received a good training as well as fair education. ”

“ Of what little culture Australia had received from the remainder of the hemisphere, Tasmania again received only a part. The prevailing opinion that the Tasmanians were the most primitive of recent peoples is therefore probably justified. They lacked everything that the Australians lacked; and in addition lacked spear-throwers, boomerangs, shields, and ground stone tools. ”

“ The length of time during which the Tasmanians were entirely cut off from anything like communication with the people of the mainland is marked amongst them by no such improvements in arts and arms as have distinguished the Aborigines of Australia and New Caledonia. ”

“ When races of superior intellect and bodily strength were developed in Europe and northern Asia, the ancestors of the Tasmanians and the Australoids were driven forth into the forests of Africa and southern Asia. From out of the Tasmanian type was specialized the Negro of Africa and southern Asia. But the unspecialized Tasmanian meantime was either extinguished by stronger races or was pushed on, ever farther and farther eastwards and southwards, until first Australia, and lastly what was once the southernmost peninsula of Australia—Tasmania—was his last refuge. ”

“ It is an open question whether the Tasmanians reached Van Diemen’s Land from South Australia, from Timor, or from New Caledonia—the line of migration having, in this latter case, wound round Australia, instead of stretching across it. ”

“ The Tasmanians, as good an example of a nomad people as it would be possible to mention, only erected temporary shelters, and yet they burnt their dead, and raised to them mausoleums of branches and bark, which have been described and figured by Péron. I have just remarked that the Australians had their institutions and their industries. Undoubtedly in Tasmania and Australia man is exhibited with the smallest amount of human development. ”

“ II. From Van Diemen’s Land to the South-Eastern parts of Asia.—The aborigines of Van Diemen’s Land, conveniently called Tasmanians, have a fair claim, when considered by themselves, to be looked upon as members of a separate species. The Australians are on a level low enough to satisfy the most exaggerated painters of a state of nature; but the Tasmanians are, apparently, lower still. Of this family but a few families remain—occupants of Flinders’ Island, whither they have been removed by the Van Diemen’s Land Government. ”

“ The American Indians were of old placed with the Tasmanians among the unimprovable races. Both roamed the forests, clad in skins of beasts, and subsisting upon the produce of the chase. The wigwam was preferable to the gunyah; but the seasons of the beaver-land were sterner than the soft airs of Tasmania. The cultivation of the ground and the tending of cattle were despised by both peoples. The settlers believed both of them incapable of labour, and unqualified for improvement. ”

“ The Tasmanians shared some of the physical features of the Australoids. Like them they were dark-skinned—a very dark brown—and of brutish appearance, especially in the women. The men were usually better looking than the females, but both alike represented perhaps the lowest type of humanity which has been known to scientific men in a living state—for they just lived long enough to be photographed. The Tasmanians were distinctly more negroid than the Australoids. ”

“ The Australians, whom Colonel Lane Fox referred to as being 'the lowest amongst the existing races of the world of whom we have any accurate knowledge' are very far in advance of the Tasmanians, whose lowly state of culture conformed thoroughly with the characteristics of a truly primitive race, a survival not only from the stone age in general, but from almost the earliest beginnings of the stone age. The difference between the culture of the Tasmanians and that of the Australians was far greater than that which exists between man of the 'river drift' period and his Neolithic successors. ”

“ The aboriginal Tasmanians stood even at a lower level of culture than the Australians. At the occupation the scattered bands, with no hereditary chiefs or social organisation, numbered altogether 2000 souls at most, speaking several distinct dialects, whether of one or more stock languages is uncertain. ”

“ Naked and houseless, the Tasmanians had learned to satisfy only a very few of man's needs. Yet that which they had learned had carried them a long way beyond the earliest men. They could kindle a fire, which kept them warm in cold weather, and over it they cooked their meat. ”

“ On the aptitude of the Tasmanians and Australians, Dr. Davis has some observations, after an inspection of some of their skulls. He assumes that they were "rendered by nature utterly devoid of the power to receive that which is designated civilization by the Europeans—i.e. an extraneous and heterogeneous cultivation, for which they have no taste or fitness, but which has to be thrust upon them by the high hand of presumed philanthropy, and under the influences of which their own proper endowments are constantly injured, and they themselves are inevitably destroyed." ”

“ The group in fig. 12 shows ordinary Tasmanian forms, two of them being finer tools for scraping and grooving. (For further details reference may be made to H. Ling Roth, The Tasmanians, (2nd ed., 1899) ; R. Brough Smyth, Aborigines of Victoria (1878) , vol. ii.; Papers and Proceedings of Royal Society of Tasmania; and papers by the present writer in Journal of the Anthropological Institute.) The Tasmanians, when they came in contact with the European explorers and settlers, were not the broken outcasts they afterwards became. ”

“ Condition of the Tasmanians of modern times Men so completely uncivilized as this no longer exist on earth. The most savage tribes found by explorers have learned how useful fire is and they understand how to make it. The people whom the English found on the island of Tasmania a century or so ago were among the lowest savages known to us. They wore no clothing ”

“ We often speak of the Primitive man; where is he? The very despised Tasmanian had advanced in one respect, according to our notions of civilization, beyond the age of Abraham. We read of him marrying his half-sister; a practice which, though recognised as proper with his people, was abhorrent to the customs of Diemenese. The primitive man owned no family, for the children were the mother's only. With the wild race in the South, the father had a place in the community.
The Tasmanians had already advanced. ”

“ The first French navigator who came to the fair island was Marion du Fresne. He had heard of the discovery by Tasman, and paid a visit to the spot on which the Dutch had landed, Frederick Henry Bay. He arrived there in two vessels, on the 4th of March, 1772. The French author, Domény de Rienzi, informs us that "the Aborigines came with confidence down to the boats, and remained near the French, with their children and their wives." As this was the first time the Tasmanians had come in contact with Europeans, it is pleasing to record this evidence of their frank cordiality with the strangers. ”

“ Robinson—who tried so desperately to civilize the Tasmanians on Flinders Island, and was held forth to be the very man to raise and save the Blacks—when removed to a new colony, under the most favourable circumstances, with a good staff, and the smile of the authorities, hardly ever attempted anything for the civilization of the Port Phillip Natives, and lived there long enough to witness the extinction of several important tribes under his protection, and the miserable decline of all others. ”

“ Between the Tasmanians, representing in their very low culture the one extreme, and the most civilized peoples at the other extreme, lie races exhibiting in a general way intermediate conditions of advancement or retardation. ”

“ They go naked, have no fixed habitation, use bone and stone implements, have no knowledge of metals or pottery, and in stature, colour, and appearance are similar; but they resemble more the Tasmanians, who are of purer blood. ”

“ The neophyte of civilization and the red-handed savage slept beneath the fallen leaves of the forest. I turned my gaze from the bay to the opposite side of the channel. There, at Oyster Cove, at the distance of two or three miles from the scene of the first Black settlement, stood before me the rude homes of the last feeble few of the race! There is something of a peculiarly melancholy interest in the reflection, that the remnant of the Tasmanian tribes should expire within sight of the Bruni depôt of their day of strength and independence. ”

“ Robert Clark brought to my house in Hobart Town four Tasmanian youths, my feelings of the prospective civilization and happiness of the race were of the most buoyant character. The dear lads were so interesting and artless as to gain my heart. They were clean, cheerful, and intelligent. Dressed in comfortable, and even respectable, European attire, with their fine open countenances, their languid smile, their beautiful eyes, I could not recognise them as the sons of degraded savages. ”

“ The occupation of the continent by the Australians, who, it may be reasonably held, were in a somewhat higher state of culture and who were better armed than the Tasmanians, must have resulted in the amalgamation of the two races, either by the subjection of the latter, or, what is more likely from what we know of the Australians of the present day, by the extermination of the former inhabitants, at least so far as regarded the males, and the absorption of the females into the conquering tribes. ”

“ And before we judge of them too harshly we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only upon animals, such as the vanished bison and the dodo, but upon its inferior races. The Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged by European immigrants, in the space of fifty years. Are we such apostles of mercy as to complain if the Martians warred in the same spirit? ”

“ Intercourse with other tribes has, in fact, been promoted by commerce, been cemented by missions.
The cases of Melanesia and New Zealand, or, more aptly, the Papuans of Melanesia and the Papuans of Tasmania, are not parallel. The islanders of those equatorial regions have not been, except at rare intervals, even visited by Europeans. Although communication be easy, it is not expedient, for each island is a nation in itself, having its independent language, and only coming in contact with others on terms of destructive warfare. The "new blood" has more force when applied to Tasmania. ”

“ No one ignorant of the western country of Tasmania can form a correct idea of the travelling difficulties. While I was resident in Hobart Town, the Governor, Sir John Franklin, and his lady, undertook the western journey to Macquarie Harbour, and suffered terribly. ”

“ There is now living at the Tasmanian Aborigines' Establishment, at Oyster Cove, a native black woman of Tasmania, who, when young, bore black children to her native husband—then several half-castes, of whom two grown-up women are now alive—and, finally, two or three black children (one of whom is now a fine boy about nine years old) by a black countryman, to whom she was united upon being removed from her European protector. ”

“ No story can be sadder, as illustrating both civilization and decline, than that told me at Oyster Cove by the Superintendent concerning a beautiful Tasmanian girl, who had been adopted by Lady Franklin, and afterwards thrown into the herd of degraded savages. She had dwelt in the Colonial palace, had been taught, petted, and trained to higher hopes. She was then left to grope her way to the grave along with the untutored of her own race, the ignorant and vicious of ours. But a friend has sent me his own sketch of the girl. It appeared in the Hobart Town Mercury last June. ”

“ We have left Australia proper far behind us, but the Bass Strait which separates that land from Tasmania is evidently of modern formation. The similarity of the vegetation, minerals, animal, and vegetable life of the two countries shows that this island must, at some time in the long-past ages, have been connected with the mainland. And yet the aborigines of Tasmania were a race quite distinct from those of Australia, so different, indeed, as only to resemble them in color. They were a well-formed, athletic people, with brilliant eyes, curly hair, flat noses, and elaborately tattooed bodies. ”

“ Tasmania, a large, beautiful island to the southeast of Australia, when discovered by Van Dieman, was peopled with a magnificent race of savages, resembling somewhat the American Indian. Civilization, with its attendant advantages and evils, proved too much for the primitive child of the forest. The last Tasmanian, a woman, died in 1885, and the once splendid race is now extinct. ”