ENPages
1
=============================
[centred] CORRESPONDENCE
=============================
[centred] THE " BLACK " QUESTION.
To the Editor of the Port Denison Times.
SIR - Observing in one of your late issues the report of a meeting held in Bowen to consider the propriety of advising His Excellency the Governor to move in the matter of allowing the blacks into stations in this district, as an outside squatter of now nearly twelve years constant residence in the Leichhardt and Kennedy, and moreover one who has lately suffered very severely at their hands, I feel bound by consideration for the lives and property at stake to veto the idea that half civilising the blacks by admitting them into our stations will ever lessen their natural inclination to shed blood—it is a characteristic of their race, which semi-civilization will only make more dangerous. I was glad to see, Mr. Editor, the practical way which you, in your comments on the subject, regarded the fact of our present inadequate means of protection from the treachery of ruthless savages in the outlying districts, where murders are frequent—unprovoked murders, which shows us, Sir, that the only effect of allowing the blacks into our stations will be to expose the white man's numerical weakness and endow with superior cunning those whose murderous propensities we can scarcely checkmate in their present untutored state. No doubt the Rev. Mr. Tanner and his coadjutors are moved by the kindest sympathies; the Christian minister's duty is evidently "to seek and to save." But we have to regard the fact that throughout the colony the stations that have allowed the blacks in have always been the centres of depredation: this is my experience, and I am satisfied it is the experience of hundreds of other bushmen also. The blacks who committed the murders at Comet, in 1862, at Purbrook Downs, and at Albinia Downs, were Dutton's blacks, who were harboured there to the sorrow of their neighbours. To my own knowledge, the murders at Camboon, on the Dawson, were done by the Redbank blacks, Ross's station. Poor Mrs. Fraser, in her last moments, appealed to the station blackboy to save her; he replied, "Bail me kill em you me self!" Another instance I will give: the blacks had not been let in to the Nogoa stations at all, on account of the murder of the lamented Mr. Wills, of Cullinglaringo [sic], and twenty of his people; but when I was passing Yannala, Mr. J. Black's station, in May last, the evening I stayed there, Mr. Black brought into the station some sixty or eighty blacks; Mr. Cedric Wills, writing me in August following, said, "The blacks are all out again from Yannala, but not before they have killed two shepherds."
There is a point, I think, which the meeting in question quite overlooked, viz., the nomadic character of the blacks. They would never stop long in one place unless compelled, and of course compulsion would be illegal; when they took their leave of the model stations, of course the tomahawks supplied would be handy to cut out 'possums or to kill a white man, as the case might be. Besides, if blacks are to be kept on the stations, of course the Government must feed them; and that I trust will be done if they quarter them on the stations.
In conclusion, Sir, I must say that public opinion in general up here is strongly opposed to the purpose of the Bowen meeting; and I am certain that if the Kennedy is canvassed on the subject not one assentant in a hundred persons will be gained in favour of the movement. If need be, a counter representation will be made on this subject to His Excellency; but that I trust will not be needed.
Trusting that the Port Denison Times will continue to watch over the interests of outsiders in this very important matter -
I am, Sir, Yours respectfully,
[named on right] WILLIAM CLARK.
Sellheim River, 19th February, 1867.