Pinjarra Massacre
| Pinjarra massacre | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
|||||||
| Belligerents | |||||||
| British colonists | Pindjarup people | ||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||
| Governor Captain James Stirling | Kalyute | ||||||
| Strength | |||||||
| 25 soldiers, policemen and settlers | 60–80 men, women and children | ||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||
| 1 dead, 1 injured | 25–30 dead, unknown number injured | ||||||
The Pinjarra Massacre or the Battle of Pinjarra was an attack that occurred at Pinjarra, Western Australia on a group of up to 80 Noongar people by a detachment of 25 soldiers, police and settlers led by Governor James Stirling in 1834. After attacks on the displaced Swan River Whadjuk people and depredations on settlers by a group of the Binjareb people led by Calyute had, according to European settlers, reached unacceptable levels, culminating in the payback killing of an ex-soldier, Stirling led his force after the party. Arriving at their camp, five members of the pursuit party were sent into the camp to arrest the suspects and the Aborigines resisted. In the ensuing melee, Stirling reported 15 killed (eleven names were collected later from Aboriginal sources); police superintendent T.T. Ellis later died of wounds and a soldier was wounded. Stirling warned the tribe against payback killings and arranged a peace between the warring tribes, but Calyute continued to break it by raiding the Whadjuk until his demise.
Robert Menli Lyon had commented on the fact that some of the soldiers from Tasmania would as soon shoot an Aboriginal as shoot a kangaroo and there had been Aboriginal payback attacks on settlers, including the killing of Nesbitt, a servant of Thomas Peel. Captain Frederick Irwin, the lieutenant governor in Stirling's absence, had inflamed the situation, adopting a soldier's attitude to crush a warlike group of Aborigines and reduce them to a state of subjection.
It was this unyielding, overbearing attitude that had alienated [Irwin] from the body of Swan River settlers and caused them to burn him in effigy on the eve of his departure. It was a narrow, regimented view of frontier problems and, perhaps, part of the blame for the Pinjarra massacre can be attributed to Irwin and his unsympathetic administration of Aboriginal affairs during James Stirling's absence.
Governor Stirling had been visiting the 400-km-distant seaport of Albany and bad weather caused his return to be delayed until September. In response to calls from Pinjarra settlers for protection against the increased hostility of local Binjareb Noongars led by Calyute, Stirling organised a mounted force of police, bushmen and ex-soldiers. Their brief was to protect settlers, safeguard Aboriginal mail-carriers and confront the Binjareb on the Murray River. A small garrison at Dandalup had been withdrawn from fear of Aboriginal reprisals after they had shot some Aboriginal people.
...
Wikipedia