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CHAPTER 3

Mediations

In no Australian indigenous language that I know or know of is there a word that can be readily translated by the multipurpose English word “thing”; nor is there a word that readily translates as “work.” While one always has to exercise caution in reading from language to culture, in this chapter I aim to show how this observation relates to historically deeply entrenched differences between indigenous social and cultural formations and those that have come to Australia with its colonization.¹ I return to amplify this observation in the conclusion of this chapter, which I hope will have shown how the evidence of indigenous-nonindigenous relations over time must unsettle some of our taken-for-granted assumptions concerning valuation of “things” and how indigenous interests in the bodiliness of outsiders were an extension of their orientation to the social potentials of relationship.

There was, to begin with, considerable difference between outsiders and indigenous people in the extent of their intentional orientation toward meeting previously unknown people. Arriving outsiders actively looked for indigenous people; while the latter were often overtaken by surprise and moved away from or sought to evade the outsiders, for which they were often considered timid (see Davenport, Johnson, and Yuwali 2005). This chapter examines these differences in interest and approach under three headings: the matching of emotions, the alignment of attention, and the sharing (or not sharing) of intentions. Many of the stories here are about “things”: objects and what was made of them by indigenous and nonindigenous people in encounter, since these were so much a part of the European approach. To begin with, we consider an early observation of indigenous Australians that represented them as people with few if any wants.

“All Things Necessary for Life”

Captain Cook was sent from Britain in 1769 to carry a party of scientists from the Royal Society to the Pacific Ocean to witness the transit of Venus. Government instruction to him included secret orders (opened at sea) to look for the long-suspected but as-yet-elusive Terra Australis—the supposed southern continent; this was a matter of intense interest to him. Cook was also “to observe the Genius, Temper, Disposition and Number of the Natives if there be any” everywhere he went (as well as to take note of the geography, plant and animal life, and other aspects of the continent). He was, further, to “endeavour by all proper means to cultivate a Friendship and Alliance with them, making them presents of such Trifles as they may Value inviting them to Traffick, and Shewing them every kind of Civility and Regard; taking Care however not to suffer yourself to be surprized by them, but to be always upon your guard against any Accidents” (NLA MS 2).

Presents were to be given for the purposes of showing civility and inaugurating exchange. Official instructions were often liberal sounding in recommending good treatment of natives, but they were also always oriented to fulfillment of the expedition’s aims. The colonizing instruction to Cook was preeminent: “You are also with the Consent of the Natives to take Possession of Convenient Situations in the Country in the Name of the King of Great Britain: Or: if you find the Country uninhabited take Possession for his Majesty by setting up Proper Marks and Inscriptions, as first discoverers and possessors” (NLA MS 2).

Cook’s stated view of the “natives” is often cited for its appreciative tone:

From what I have said of the Natives of New-Holland they may appear to some to be the most wretched people upon Earth, but in reality they are far more happier than we Europeans; being wholy unacquainted not only with the superfluous but the necessary Conveniencies so much sought after in Europe, they are happy in not knowing the use of them. They live in a Tranquillity which is not disturb’d by the Inequality of Condition: The Earth and sea of their own accord furnishes them with all things necessary for life, they covet not Magnificent Houses, Houshold-stuff &c., they live in a warm and fine Climate and enjoy a very wholsome Air…. In short they seem’d to set no Value upon any thing we gave them, nor would they ever part with anything of their own for any one article we could offer them; this in my opinion argues that they think themselves provided with all the necessarys of Life and that they have no superfluities. (Cook 1955: vol. 1, p. 399)

Figure 3. Explorers’ routes. CartoGIS, Australian National University.

Cook’s experiences led him to see the natives’ setting “no value” on anything, nor parting with anything.

In subsequent exploration, by others, interest in the natives was subordinate in the range of purposes with which the outsiders came; they were a lower priority than we might expect from our present perspectives. They were to be placated, kept on good terms, and made useful where possible. They might usefully supply information about the country, such as availability of water and information concerning terrain. Once they set about colonizing the continent, outsiders largely had exploration of the country on their minds and explicit instructions to find arable and usable country (Wolfe 1999). Journals of continental explorers (such as Baudin, Péron, Grey, Sturt, Edward John Eyre, John Lort Stokes, and many others) contain sections such as “Visited by the natives,” “Our intercourse with them,” “Description of their weapons and other implements.” Though the basic plot of their writings is one of exploration, their stories of encounters with natives are a hazardous and emotionally fraught subplot—far removed from Cook’s calm echoes of the Enlightenment and his Rousseauian view of a people without wants.

Watching Emotions for Trouble

Emotion is often understood as intersubjectively and interactively constructed (Wilce 2009:481) and emotions as forms of expressive response to our shared life. In many outbursts in unexpected encounter on the part of indigenous people, however, we mainly see surges of overpowered surprise and alarm, to some extent couched in culturally conventional form (dancing in place, singly or together), but often also in evidently unintentional, raw physical reactions (trembling, shaking).

Charles Napier Sturt (1795–1869), starting from Sydney and later on from Adelaide, traced several of the westward-flowing rivers, hoping to find an “inland sea.” He determined that these rivers all merged into the Murray River. His third expedition in 1844 from Adelaide northward never reached the center of the continent as he had intended; he returned to Adelaide in poor health with the expedition under another’s command. On that final expedition into uncharted territory, he encountered indigenous people who had seemingly had no prior contact with outsiders. He and his men “saw a party of natives assembled on a sand hill, to the number of fourteen. As we advanced towards them they retreated, but at length made a stand as if to await our approach. They were armed with spears, and on Mr. Browne dismounting to walk towards them, formed themselves into a circle, in the centre of which were two old men, round whom they danced” (Sturt 1849: vol. 1, pp. 340–41). Regarding his party’s approach to an old man who had become aware of the Europeans advancing on him (they were on horseback), Sturt reports: “In order to allay his fears Mr. Browne dismounted and walked up to him, whilst I kept back. On this the poor fellow began to dance, and to call out most vehemently, but finding that all he could was to no purpose, he sat down and began to cry” (ibid., 1:339). Sturt goes on to report of this old man, however, that within a short time: “We managed to pacify him, so much that he mustered courage to follow us, with his two companions to our halting place” (ibid.).

On coming upon some natives at a river, Sturt observed that several of them “trembled greatly” (ibid., 1:110); and of another man whom the outsiders interrupted in collecting wood, that he expressed “horror and amazement—down went his branches—out went his hands—and trembling head to foot, he began to shout as loud as he could bawl” (ibid., 2:63).

It was once believed and fervently hoped that a great river entered the Indian Ocean on the northwest of Australia, and that the country it drained might be suitable for colonization. In 1837 and 1839 George Grey (1812–98) led hardship-plagued expeditions, the first an ill-prepared exploration of northwest Australia from Cape Town—only one man of his party had seen northern Australia before. Wrecked, almost drowned, and completely lost, Grey was wounded in a skirmish with Aborigines. The party traced the course of the Glenelg River, in the Kimberley region of Western Australia, before retreating to Mauritius to recover. Two years later, Grey returned and was again wrecked with his party in Western Australia. Though they were the first Europeans to see the Gascoyne River, they had survived the subsequent near-waterless journey on foot to the present location of Perth only with the help of Kaiber, a Whadjuk Nyungar man mentioned in Chapter 1 as Grey’s guide. Grey (1841: vol. 1, pp. 362–63) records that first-contacted natives he approached began singing in an effort to “sing them away.”

Péron (2006:177) describes a young man who sighted the Baudin party of exploration (in Tasmania) from a promontory and was apparently so excited by this unexpected appearance and so encouraged by “our signs of friendship” (what those may have been, is not recorded), that he “jumped rather than climbed down the rock and was with us in the blink of an eye…. There was nothing stern or wild in his features; his glance was keen and lively, and his air expressed both goodwill and surprise. M. Freycinet embraced him, and so I did the same; but from the indifference with which he received this demonstration of our interest, it was easy to see it held no significance for him.” These outsiders were warily attentive to the natives’ emotional states. Their journals evince a continuing concern and running interpretation of this, largely in the interests of their own security. However, they seem to have been inclined to read a great deal into situations, perhaps without verifiable basis for their interpretations. This often resulted in misapprehensions, sometimes perilous ones, as the following episode illustrates.

A few days after some men of the Baudin expedition had made their presence known to a local group of Bruny Islanders (Tasmanians), a M. Maurouard engaged in what he thought was a sporting round of arm wrestling with an indigenous man, forcing him to give ground in a way that apparently seemed to everyone to clearly spell victory for the Frenchman. The French thought the indigenous men had accepted what they saw as “defeat” at this “sport.” But a few minutes later a spear came flying back at them, thrown by one of the natives who had seemingly left a few minutes earlier, and pierced Maurouard’s shoulder. Baudin wrote of earlier minutes of this episode: “It seems that the best possible relations existed constantly between the two parties. A quarter of an hour before the departure, the natives had indeed all disappeared, but as they had been loaded with presents and were in excellent spirits, the men were far from distrusting them” (1974:304).

It seems the Aborigines’ disappearance a quarter of an hour earlier may have meant more than the visitors thought. It may have provided an occasion for some who were negatively inclined toward the French to talk among themselves. This constant concern with emotional states in these early, face-to-face encounters is gradually transformed, with extension of colonization and the proliferation of settlers and their institutions, into ever more stereotypic characterizations of indigenous people (see Chapter 4).

Music and Materiality

There was a repertoire of early encounter methods that voyagers brought with them to try to channel early contacts. Some of these involved music, dance, and greeting behavior, and a considerable range of material offerings that, it was hoped, would engage indigenous people and create good feeling. In a letter of 1788 Arthur Phillip wrote, linking music and imitation: “They … are fond of any very soft Musick, and will attend to singing any of the Words which they very readily repeat” (Clendinnen 2005:26). Captain-Lieutenant Watkin Tench (an officer of the First Fleet) reported in his journal that one of his party “whistled the air of Malbrooke” at which the natives appeared “highly charmed” (see Tench 2009:43; also Clendinnen 2005:9–10). The singing was not all one way. William Dawes (1825) reports a lively young Aboriginal girl rising to sing for an English company—though the effort to charm with song is more often reported of themselves by diarists than of natives.

Clearly music was not only thought to be engaging and soothing; it also stood out as a mode of contact far different from trying to make propositional content understood. It was meant to launch something between arrivals and natives that the latter could attend to directly, and the fact that natives sometimes took up the tune and sang back was an additional, but perhaps unexpected, benefit.

Two recent historical works have focused on other elements of the colonial repertoire: dancing (Clendinnen 2005) and shaking hands (Shellam 2009). At Sydney Cove, 29 January 1788, three days after landfall, Lieutenant William Bradley “had his first meeting with the Australians. It was a remarkably friendly encounter, the British party being welcomed ashore by unarmed men who pointed out a good landing place ‘in the most cheerful manner, shouting and dancing’ ” (Clendinnen 2005:8). Then, Bradley says, “ ‘these people mixed with ours and all hands danced together.’ The next day at Spring Cove there was another impromptu dance party when about a dozen of the local men came paddling in soon after the British landed, left their spears in their canoes as a sign of friendship, and all proceeded to more ‘dancing and otherwise amusing themselves’ ” (ibid., 8).

With reference to this dancing reproduced on the cover of her book Dancing with Strangers, Inga Clendinnen (2005:9) comments: “What [Bradley] shows us is the British and the Australians dancing hand in hand like children at a picnic: that is, dancing in the British style…. Furthermore, the pairs are scattered over the whole foreground, with none of the local preference for formation dancing, which reinforces my suspicion that it was the British who took the initiative.” I share Clendinnen’s suspicion: that the English took the initiative in this combined English-Aboriginal dancing, as they did in producing music. (There is evidence of Aborigines dancing by themselves and at a distance, perhaps not in welcome but self-protectively or to induce outsiders to approach; see, e.g., Bradley 1969:66; Baudin 1974:322.)