Truganini
Truganini was an Aboriginal Tasmanian woman who has been widely described as the last "full-blooded" Aboriginal Tasmanian. She was a member of the Nuenonne people and grew up on Bruny Island in south-eastern Tasmania. As a teenager she saw the death and displacement of much of Tasmania's Aboriginal population as a result of European colonisation during the Black War. She became a guide to George Augustus Robinson and took part in a series of expeditions to capture and exile the island's remaining Aboriginal population.
Truganini was herself exiled along with the surviving Aboriginal Tasmanians to the Wybalenna Aboriginal Establishment on Flinders Island in 1835. She later spent time in the Port Phillip District, where she became a fugitive and was tried alongside four others for the murder of a pair of whalers. After being acquitted of the crime, she was returned to Wybalenna and later moved to Oyster Cove. By 1872, she was the only Aboriginal resident left at Oyster Cove and began to be mythologised and romanticised as the "last of a dying race", becoming an object of fascination for the British population.
After her death, Truganini became a symbol of the supposed extinction of the Tasmanian Aboriginal people. She has featured prominently in art, music, and literature, while the narratives surrounding her life have been continually redefined and reinterpreted. Once cast as the final survivor of a "doomed race", she has since been reframed by some as a memorial to the genocide of Indigenous Australians, and reclaimed by others as an anti-colonial figure. The mythology of Truganini as the "last Tasmanian" has itself been challenged as part of broader efforts to contest the myth of Aboriginal Tasmanian extinction.
Early life
Truganini was born around 1812 at Recherche Bay in southern Tasmania, then called Van Diemen's Land. She was the daughter of Manganerer, a senior figure of the Nuenonne people, whose country included Bruny Island and the coastal area of the Tasmanian mainland between Recherche Bay and Oyster Cove. Truganini's mother was likely a member of the Ninine people, another clan group from the Nuenonne's language group whose territory encompassed the area surrounding Port Davey.By the time of Truganini's birth, the Nuenonne population had begun to encounter British colonisation. Captain James Cook had first landed on Bruny Island at Adventure Bay in 1777, and within a few decades runaway convicts had begun to conduct raids on Tasmanian Aboriginal settlements to kidnap Aboriginal women. When a group of French explorers and scientists arrived on Bruny Island in 1802, they observed that the Nuenonne they encountered were terrified of the Europeans' guns and refused to allow their women to go near the visitors. After the establishment of Hobart in 1804, a large number of ships began to sail past Nuenonne country to enter the Derwent River. In 1819, the Aboriginal and settler populations of Tasmania as a whole both sat at around 5000, with the British population overwhelmingly made up of men. By 1830, the British population had grown to 23,500.
Life at Missionary Bay
After the arrival of British settlers the seal colonies that the Nuenonne relied on for food were soon destroyed, leaving many of the women reliant on trading sex for food with British settlers who had established whaling stations on the island. In 1816 Truganini's mother was murdered by a group of sailors, and in 1826, two of her sisters were kidnapped by a sealer. There is also an unverified account published shortly before Truganini's death that around 1828, Truganini herself was abducted and raped by timber cutters. According to the book, the timber cutters also murdered two Nuenonne men, one of whom was Truganini's fiancé, by throwing them out of a boat and cutting off their hands as they tried to clamber back in.By the late 1820s, Tasmania was in the midst of the Black War. The kidnapping of Aboriginal women was particularly common, and retributive violence between displaced Aboriginal clans and settlers was prevalent. In 1828, driven by settler fears of Aboriginal guerrilla violence, the colony's governor, George Arthur declared martial law. The order did not extend to Bruny Island, where the more cooperative attitude of the Nuenonne towards the British settlers was viewed as a potential model for Tasmania's other Aboriginal peoples. Given this less hostile relationship, the island was identified as a suitable site for an experiment in conciliation between the settlers and the Indigenous population. Arthur appointed George Augustus Robinson to set up a ration station and manage the colonists' relationship with the Aboriginal population of Bruny Island. Robinson, who was motivated by humanitarian and religious ideals, hoped that his efforts—modelled on conciliation and resettlement of Native Americans in the United States—would save the Aboriginal Tasmanian population from an otherwise certain extinction.
Robinson first encountered Truganini while she was living amongst a group of convict woodcutters on the mainland. He brought her back to Bruny Island, where he established a Christian mission at Missionary Bay. He used Truganini's presence at the mission to entice her father and a small group of other Aboriginal people to join her. He deplored the widespread trade in sex between Aboriginal women and British settlers, attempting with little success to "civilise" the mission's residents and put them to work in exchange for extra rations. Truganini spent her days at the mission diving for shellfish and crafting necklaces and baskets.
In 1829 a group of escaped convicts kidnapped Truganini's stepmother. Manganerer attempted to follow them in a canoe but was blown out to sea, killing his son and almost killing him. When he returned to Missionary Bay, he found that almost the entirety of his clan group had died from disease. By early 1830, Manganerer had also died, succumbing to a sexually transmitted disease. Robinson, who had developed an apparently fatherlike relationship with Truganini, allowed the Nuenonne elder Woureddy to marry her in October 1829.
Guide for the "friendly mission"
In January 1830, Robinson obtained the governor's approval for a "friendly mission" to contact and gain the trust of the Aboriginal peoples of western and north-western Tasmania. He brought several guides, including Truganini, Woureddy, and two men named Kikatapula and Maulboyheenner, along with a small group of convicts. The party set out on foot from Recherche Bay on 3 February 1830.Truganini, who was suffering from an advanced case of syphilis, helped collect food for the expedition party by diving for shellfish and gathering edible plants. She also began a sexual relationship with Robinson's convict foreman, Alexander McKay. The group finally encountered a group of ten Ninine families shortly after passing Bathurst Harbour. On 25 March they encountered another group and performed corroborees with them. At one point during the journey Truganini, Woureddy and McKay were sent to the Macquarie Harbour Penal Station on Sarah Island to gather medication and rations. While they were there, the other guides abandoned Robinson. Robinson, starving and debilitated by skin and eye infections, was saved from death only after being located by Truganini and Woureddy on their return.
The group continued their journey across western Tasmania and learned of the increasingly violent massacres of Aboriginal Tasmanians that were taking place as part of the Black War. They finally finished their journey in Launceston in October 1830, with Truganini so weakened that she could barely walk. With the colony under martial law, Truganini and the other Aboriginal guides were briefly imprisoned, until an official named George Whitcomb secured their release and allowed Robinson's party to stay at his home.
By the time of their arrival in Launceston, the governor had announced a policy known as the "Black Line" that required every man in Tasmania to join a militia. These militias would form two human chains that would trap and then remove every remaining Aboriginal inhabitant from the districts settled by Britons. About 60 settlers and 300 Aboriginal Tasmanians had been killed over the preceding two years. Robinson reached an agreement with the governor that his party would attempt to locate and make peace with any Aboriginal groups who evaded the Black Line, and resettle them on Swan Island until a more permanent resettlement site could be established. Robinson quickly set out this next expedition with Truganini, Woureddy, an Aboriginal boy named Peevay, and two other guides to negotiate these groups' surrender before they could become victims of the Black Line. He persuaded some sealers to release the Aboriginal women that they had enslaved, and convinced a number of Aboriginal clan groups that he encountered—including a group led by the warrior Mannalargenna—to accompany him to Swan Island after warning them of the encroaching danger.
Robinson brought Truganini and the rest of the assembled group to the inhospitable Swan Island, which was exposed to powerful gales, had little food or water, and was infested with tiger snakes. After securing them on the island, Robinson received a letter of praise from the military commandant for his efforts. While the 2200 militiamen of the Black Line had managed to capture just two Aboriginal people over the course of a chaotic seven weeks, his small party had secured 15. Robinson took Truganini and a few of the other Aboriginal guides to accompany him to Hobart, where he met with the governor in early 1831. Robinson was rewarded with land grants and hundreds of pounds for the achievements of his friendly mission, while Truganini and the other guides received some clothing and a boat.
Guide for further expeditions
While the colony's executive encouraged Robinson to immediately set out on another mission to round up the colony's remaining Aboriginal peoples, Robinson successfully persuaded the colony's governor and Aboriginal Committee that a permanent resettlement site should first be established for the surviving Aboriginal population on Gun Carriage Island. On 1 March Robinson took Truganini and 22 other Aboriginal people he had gathered in Hobart back to Swan Island along with a small number of convicts and soldiers. There, they collected the 51 people who had been left on Swan Island and continued towards the new resettlement colony. Truganini and the other guides complained that they did not want to be resettled on Gun Carriage Island, but Robinson nonetheless expelled the sealers who had established a village there and turned the island into a resettlement station. Truganini and Woureddy were given one of the cottages that had been constructed by the sealers.The new settlement soon ran into difficulties. Robinson continued his attempts to expel the sealers and "rescue" the Aboriginal women who lived with them, but the sealer James Munro persuaded the governor that these efforts were unlawful as the women were their wives rather than their captives. Robinson was ordered by the governor to release the women and to cease attempting to expel the sealers from the islands. Many of the Aboriginal residents had also begun to suffer from disease. Truganini refused to enter her cottage and begged Robinson to let her leave the island and return to the mainland.