Aditya Tadimeti - 2021 Mitra Scholar

2020-21 Mitra FAMILY GRANT Recipient Fighting Fire with Fire: How Indigenous Fire Shaped European Settlement and Frontier Conflict in Australia Aditya Tadimeti

Fighting Fire with Fire: How Indigenous Fire Shaped European Settlement and Frontier Conflict in Australia

Aditya Tadimeti 2021 Mitra Family Scholar Mentors: Mr. Clifford Hull, Ms. Amy Pelman April 14, 2021

Tadimeti 2 In March 1772, Captain Marc-Joseph Marion du Fresne became the first European to explore Tasmania, a small island off the coast of Australia.1 His expedition confirmed what Dutch explorer Abel Tasman, the namesake of Tasmania, speculated over a century earlier: humans existed on the island.2 Marion du Fresne’s exploration is significant for reasons beyond the fact that his group was the first to encounter indigenous Tasmanians. Rather, it was the nature of the encounter that elucidated the cultural differences between Europeans and indigenous tribes,3 foreshadowing conflict that would arise over the next several decades.

Captain Marion landed. Advancing in front of him, one of the Aborigines offered him a lighted firebrand, that he might set light to a heap of wood heaped up on the flat shore.

Marion took it, believing that it was a formality intended to give confidence to the savages; but hardly had the little pile of wood been enflamed, when the Aborigines ... threw afterwards a volley of stones, which wounded the two captains. They (the French) repelled them by several discharges of musket. They killed one aborigine and wounded several others, and the others fled howling towards the woods.... At this moment an old chief assumed the leadership, and raised a hideous war-cry, when a storm of spears answered to his call.4

1

John West, History of Tasmania (National Library of Australia, 1852; Project Gutenberg, 2007), 2:1, accessed March 23, 2021.

2

James Bonwick, The Last of the Tasmanians: Or, The Black War of Van Diemen’s Land (University of Michigan, 2009; Low, 1870), 1, accessed March 23, 2021, Google Books.

3

Throughout this paper, I shall refer to the indigenous populations of Australia as indigenous tribes and will delineate indigenous populations in Tasmania as indigenous Tasmanian tribes. I refrain from using the term “Australian” as it ignores the unique individual cultures present across the region. Additionally, it is historically inaccurate as Australia was founded in the 20th century, after the events described in the paper, and indigenous populations did not become Australian citizens until 1967. Further, I do not use the term “Aborigine” to describe the indigenous population as it can be perceived as a derogatory term that is culturally insensitive.

4

Bonwick, The Last, 3.

Tadimeti 3 Australian historian James Bonwick’s account of the violent confrontation between French explorers and coastal tribes is a microcosm of fire’s importance in pre-colonial Australia as well as its central role in the violence between Europeans and indigenous populations in Australia.

The offering of a fire stick signified the importance of fire in indigenous society: the tribes may have used it as a greeting to help the French acclimate to the new land. When viewed in the context of fire’s prevalence in indigenous society, the tribes offered an all-encompassing tool to the French, whom they may have believed equally valued fire. Some misunderstanding between the two parties, potentially stemming from the possibility that tribes were not offering the fire as a gift to the outsiders, placed fire as the root cause of combat, portending decades of frontier violence.

History of Australian Colonization European voyages to Australia began with the Dutch in the seventeenth century, but formal colonization efforts started in the late eighteenth century with British and French explorers.5 James Cook, a British sailor, lay claim to part of the eastern coast of Australia on behalf of the British empire in 1770, naming the territory New South Wales.6 During this time, both the British and French launched expeditions to occupy unclaimed lands and limit the other nation’s ability to expand.7 Similar to the Americas in the 1500s and Africa in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Australia was a new frontier prime for colonization by European empires, who sought to take advantage of the opportunity to expand before others. Conflict between French and British forces during the Revolutionary War debilitated the two empires,

5

Frank G. Clarke, History of Australia (Westport: Greenwood Publishing Group, Incorporated, 2002), 22, ProQuest Ebook Central.

6

Clarke, 22.

7

Clarke, 22.

Tadimeti 4 leading Britain to regroup its overseas ventures and focus on settling Australia.8 In 1788, the first British fleet docked at Botany Bay, a spot on the coastline alongside New South Wales near modern-day Sydney, as shown on the map (See Figure 1), sparking decades of European settlement and encroachment on indigenous tribal lands.

Figure 1: Map of British colonies in Australia as of 1851, Museum of Australian Democracy, illustration, digital file.

British fleets to Australia were filled with convicts, a source of human capital well suited to forced settlement abroad. The British government had complete control over most convicts as

8

Clarke, 22.

Tadimeti 5 their freedoms were limited and often contingent upon serving sentences overseas as colonists.9 Many convicts sent to Tasmania, known as Van Diemen’s Land until 1856, were repeat offenders in Great Britain, and the vast majority of settlers experienced harsh lives characterized by crime and violence prior to their forced exile to Australia.10 Coupled with convicts’ lack of autonomy and unwillingness to live in the unfamiliar landscape, violence with indigenous tribes was inevitable.

Those on European expeditions to Australia quickly discovered the frequency and pervasiveness with which indigenous populations used fire. Governor Arthur Phillip, the first governor of New South Wales and leader of the British expedition in 1788, noted: In all the country hitherto explored, the parties have seldom gone a quarter of a mile without seeing trees which had been on fire. As violent thunderstorms are not uncommon on this coast, it is possible that they may have been burnt by lightning, which the gumtree is thought particularly to attract; but it is probable also that they may have been set on fire by the natives.11 While likely that indigenous populations adapted their society to the frequent lightning fires in the area, their constant use of anthropogenic fire is unquestionable and well documented, even in regions beyond locations where initial expeditions ventured. In Schouten Island off the coast of Tasmania, English navigator Tobias Furneaux documented tribal dominance over the landscape: “The country here appears to be very thickly inhabited, as there was a continual fire along-shore

9

Clarke, 22.

10

Nicholas Clements, Black War: Fear, Sex and Resistance in Tasmania (St Lucia, Queensland: University of Queensland Press, 2014), 17, accessed March 23, 2021, Scribd.

11

Arthur Phillip, The Voyage Of Governor Phillip To Botany Bay With An Account Of The Establishment Of The Colonies Of Port Jackson And Norfolk Island (1789), comp. Col. Choat (Project Gutenberg, 2005), 29.

Tadimeti 6 as we sailed.”12 George Augustus Robinson, a British settler who traveled to Tasmania in the early nineteenth century, noted, “the country as far as we had come was all burnt off and there [were] fires in all directions.”13 Despite different landscape conditions present in regions across Australia, the broad claim that the use of fire was widespread can be made given numerous European accounts across decades, covering different geographical regions. It is likely these practices were not unique to the groups that first explorers encountered, and the ubiquity of fire was ill-suited to the traditional settlement lifestyle British explorers were accustomed to. As a result, conflict between the two groups ensued. Later, exposure to indigenous fire coupled with early struggles of colonial settlements led many European settlers to adopt similar fire practices in their own society, often disrupting Australian ecosystems at the expense of the existing indigenous tribes. While indigenous tribes’ relationship to fire was integral to their way of life, it was a principal source of societal and cultural collapse during the late eighteenth and midnineteenth centuries due to European destabilization of the Australian landscape and frontier violence such as the Black War. Use of Fire in Indigenous Society Humans are estimated to have first arrived in Australia roughly sixty to seventy thousand years ago.14 Immigration to the continent occurred via marine travel when surrounding islands were still attached to the main landmass, a feat that was significantly easier compared to modern day due to the predominant glacial period that made voyages shorter. Fire is assumed to have

12

Bonwick, The Last, 4.

13

Stephen J. Pyne, Burning Bush: A Fire History of Australia (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1998; New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2014), 103.

14

Clarke, History of Australia, 9.

Tadimeti 7 originated in Australia during this same time period, but a clear surge in burning occurred forty thousand years ago, as supported by an increase in charcoal content in sediment cores.15 Tribes likely utilized fire during these prehistoric times to venture into thick forests and burn back some of the rainforest overgrowth. Through this, they could maintain hunting and settlement sites, thereby resisting the existing climatic conditions that gave way to heavy forest growth.16 By 20,000 BCE, indigenous populations are believed to have settled throughout the majority of the Australian mainland, which at the time included surrounding islands like Tasmania.17 The rise in sea levels roughly twelve thousand years ago at the end of the last glacial period ensured limited contact from the outside world, especially from western, centralized European powers, for millennia until settlers arrived in the past few hundred years. Isolation provided the optimal avenue for indigenous tribes to bend the Australian biosphere to their will through the use of fire.

Both fauna and flora that could not handle the flames died out, while other species thrived.

Fire’s Importance in Domestic Indigenous Society While fire has close ties to the human race as a whole, societies in much of the world progressed beyond a direct dependence on it for survival by the early 1800s. While European countries and the United States were well into the industrial revolution, indigenous tribes in the Australian continent were living as nomads with limited agriculture, partly due to their reliance on fire. The importance of fire in indigenous society can be understood through encounters with European settlers. Environmental history professor Stephen J. Pyne states, “Europeans often

15

Pyne, Burning Bush, 81.

16

Pyne, 81.

17

Clarke, History of Australia, 10.

Tadimeti 8 marveled that, during inclement weather, Aborigines would huddle around a fire rather than forage or hunt, that they would rather go without food than without fire.”18 Governor Phillip wrote “they usually keep [a fire] burning, and are very rarely seen without either a fire actually made, or a piece of lighted wood, which they carry with them from place to place, and even in their canoes.”19 Indigenous tribes used a combination of fur, grasses, and accumulated organic matter as tinder for igniting fires.20 Tribes rubbed together weapons, like spears and shields, to generate a spark, or they rapidly rotated a rod in a tree to generate sufficient friction.21 The use of transportable weapons, as opposed to elaborate or cumbersome tools, complemented the tribes’ nomadic lifestyles. Further, given the prevalence of the eucalyptus trees and other Sclerophyll species, this rod-and-cavity technique proved to be quite useful and broadly applicable across regions that tribes may have traversed.22 Indigenous social structure was centered around fire. Tribes were organized into subgroups known as hearth groups, which consisted of immediate family, and a single fire used for cooking, camping, and warmth.23 In the domestic scene, fires were used for cooking animals and preparing meals, tasks primarily conducted by women. Tribes leveraged the abundance of Eucalyptus trees their ancestors cultivated as ovens and continuous sources of fire, given the

18

Pyne, Burning Bush, 91.

19

Phillip, The Voyage, chap. 6, para. 10.

20

Pyne, Burning Bush, 86.

21

Pyne, 87.

22

Pyne, 87.

23

Norman B. Tindale, Aboriginal Tribes of Australia: Their Terrain, Environmental Controls, Distribution, Limits, and Proper Names. (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1974), 324, accessed March 23, 2021.

Tadimeti 9 tree’s propensity to burn.24 Fires were used for medicine and the charcoal byproducts of fire were used as a form of deodorant.25 Fire was also used to cauterize wounds and heal other skin blemishes.

Contrary to initial European beliefs of indigenous carelessness, tribes treated fire as sacred and deeply revered its proper handling.26 However, these beliefs were not baseless.

Several European explorers noted that tribes would often leave fires unattended, sometimes entirely leaving a campsite while hearth fires continued to burn.27 For example, Governor Phillip noted, “When they quit a place they never extinguish the fire they have made, but leave it to burn out.”28 This phenomenon can be partly explained by the existing vegetation. Tribal members were probably comfortable leaving the fires to burn given their extensive interactions with it, but much of the Australian landscape was highly conducive to fire, thus resulting in fires burning over long periods of time. Extinguishing certain fires could have been challenging, so tribes may have simply resorted to letting the fires burn away the landscape. This attitude was possible because of the extensive ways in which fire was used in indigenous society, so the two explanatory theories are inextricably linked.

24

Pyne, Burning Bush, 89.

25

Pyne, 91.

26

Bill Gammage, The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia (Crow’s Nest: Allen & Unwin,

2013), 160.

27

Pyne, Burning Bush, 91.

28

Phillip, The Voyage, chap. 11, para. 13.

Tadimeti 10 Landscape Management One must only look to the dominance of the genus Eucalyptus to understand the grasp tribes had over the Australian landscape. This native tree is ubiquitous across the Australian continent to an extent found in few other locations globally, and the tree’s growth can be traced to an increase in charcoal deposits roughly 10,000-12,000 years ago at the start of the Holocene when tribes liberally burned. 29 Anthropogenic fires removed competing species and invasive, damaging microbes that threatened the Eucalyptus’ survival.30 The Eucalyptus itself participated in a positive feedback loop with fire that helped eliminate competitive species. Through the highly flammable oil found in their leaves as well as their open crowns, Eucalyptus trees exacerbated fires and helped spread them for millennia.31 Thick, tough bark and deep roots make the tree resistant to damage from fires, and they contain kino, a gum-like substance, on the inside of their trunks that is resistant to fire. Not all Eucalyptus species possessed traits that were conducive to fire. Regardless, fire fostered rapid natural selection that resulted in the extinction of numerous species of both plants and animals and ensured the dominance of subgroups of the Eucalyptus that favored fire. Species that were not resistant to fire succumbed as fire spread across the continent.

Fires were ignited whenever tribes stopped during their nomadic travels. Following a pause in their journey, tribes would set fire to their campsites to purge them of evil spirits and overgrown vegetation, as well as to lure animals that would be drawn to fresh vegetation weeks

29

Gammage, The Biggest, 115; Pyne, Burning Bush, 19.

30

Pyne, 20.

31

Gammage, The Biggest, 120.

Tadimeti 11 after the fires. During their travels, indigenous tribes used fire to blaze trails, burn dense vegetation, and connect campsites with waterholes. European explorers marveled at the dense smoke tribes produced as they forged on and burned the surrounding landscape.32 In addition to using fire when stopping at campsites, indigenous tribes extensively used fire as a method of communication. Initial explorers identified this practice when scouts and tribe members ignited fires to alert tribes of the Europeans’ location. Furthermore, Europeans occasionally witnessed declarations of war or peacemaking activities that were highlighted by different types of fires. 33 As the sole, isolated occupiers of Australia, indigenous tribes were not part of the Neolithic revolution that resulted in the transition to large-scale agriculture in much of the world 12,000 years ago. As a result, indigenous tribes were primarily hunter-gatherers, and they utilized fire to shape the landscape in ways conducive to this lifestyle. Large fields of grassland were artificially created by burning away vegetation, bushes, and woodlands in order to open up foraging grounds and ease the process of hunting game.34 A key method through which indigenous tribes manipulated the landscape to their advantage was fire-stick farming. Through intentionally lit fires, tribes could burn undergrowth and access roots, key parts of their huntergatherer diet. Edward Curr, an Australian pastoralist and visitor to Victoria during the midnineteenth century, noted, “I refer to the fire-stick; for the blackfellow was constantly setting fire to the grass and trees, both accidentally, and systematically for hunting purposes. Living

32

Pyne, Burning Bush, 90.

33

Danielle Clode and Gillian Dooley, eds., The First Wave: Exploring Early Coastal Contact History in Australia (Adelaide: Wakefield Press, 2019), 163.

34

Pyne, Burning Bush, 78.

Tadimeti 12 principally on wild roots and animals, he tilled his land and cultivated his pastures with fire.”35 Grains, cereals, seeds, and tubers were teased out through fire, either for easier access, clearing surrounding vegetation, accelerating ripening of plants, or leaching toxic chemicals from wild shrubs.36 Timing was especially important, as incorrect burning of a given plot could ruin the entire life cycle of nutritious vegetation and plants. As such, tribes closely monitored the regrowth of once-burned vegetation to identify precise moments when burns could be ignited without damaging important resources. As Australian historian Bill Gammage states, “To decide what day, even what hour, to burn, managers took account of wind, humidity, aspect, target plants and animals, and fuel loads.”37 Beyond the name, fire-stick farming possessed close parallels to traditional European agriculture explorers were accustomed to in England. Similar to the Europeans, who enclosed and fenced cattle in ranches, tribes ignited fires that led to the growth of fresh grasses that attracted kangaroos. Thus, fire was the Australian counterpart to European fences and enclosures as it cornered animals based on the will of indigenous people.38 Europeans Modifying Australian Landscape A key purpose of fire in indigenous society was hunting. Not only did fire flush out kangaroos and ease capture, but plots of land that were burned produced fresh vegetation that attracted game to those sites.39 However, fire-hunting was restricted by the fuels and vegetation

35

Edward M. Curr, Recollections of Squatting in Victoria (Melbourne, Sydney, and Adelaide: George Robertson, 1883), 189, Australian Colonial Law Monographs.

36

Pyne, Burning Bush, 95.

37

Gammage, The Biggest, 169.

38

Gammage, 282.

39

Pyne, Burning Bush, 96.

Tadimeti 13 of a given area and could not be applied indiscriminately. The benefits of fire-hunting resulted more from the byproducts of the burns, not necessarily from the fires themselves, so it was important for indigenous tribes to familiarize themselves with the vegetation upon which they were burning in order to understand the timeframe for fresh vegetation to regenerate.40 Through this technique, indigenous tribes could actively control the landscape and produce environments that were conducive to animals they preferred to eat.

The traditional British settlement lifestyle that relied heavily on agriculture could not survive in Australia. The large diversity of vegetation, which Europeans were not accustomed to, and the lack of fertile land made it difficult for traditional agriculture to survive. Despite these vast differences, settlers quickly realized fire could be used to burn away undergrowth and foster fertile soil to produce grasslands capable of sustaining cattle and agriculture.41 As a result, settlers began applying fire nearly everywhere, slashing and burning the entire landscape to restructure the biota. The delicate balance that indigenous tribes created with the landscape was upended by the very same practices they used to create the balance initially. Unlike the indigenous population, the British did not intend to maintain the current landscape or favor fuels that supported a nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Rather, settlers intended to replace the Australian with the British, replacing native vegetation with an imported one.42 While tribes were highly attuned to the surrounding environment and could utilize the millennia of accumulated traditional ecological knowledge carried over from ancestors, European settlers did

40

Pyne, 96.

41

Pyne, 178.

42

Pyne, 183.

Tadimeti 14 not perceive of the nuances of burning. Across Australia, Europeans liberally applied fire, enabling them to permanently settle in the new environment. In instances where it was better to withhold fire, Europeans often burned, and in areas where burning was required, Europeans withheld it. Large conflagrations that decimated an entire landscape were frequently set off by eager settlers who wished to create an agriculturally supportive landscape.43 Indigenous bushfires that burned through large portions of land still threatened European permanent settlements and antagonized settlers. Thus, fire was hostile enough that it invited conflict that spelled the decline of indigenous tribes, but it was not so hostile as to completely protect the Australian landscape from European settlement.

The implications of European restructuring of the Australian landscape were immense.

As indigenous hunting practices were highly dependent on a certain balance of vegetation, kangaroo hunting, a key provider of indigenous food supply, was adversely affected. Cattle could now graze the open grasslands Europeans created through burning the Australian landscape, and they fed on native grasses to the point where the vegetation could no longer support kangaroos or indigenous fire.44 Hunting grounds both shrank and became harder to access. Further, firehunting followed a yearly timeline where the timing of burning practices and land cultivation aligned to attract game once a year. As a result, this process could not easily adapt to changes in the environment and the restructuring of fuels crippled indigenous society.

Ultimately, indigenous tribes were overly dependent on fire to be able to adapt to the changes brought by European settlers. Beyond problems with fire hunting, restructuring of the

43

Gammage, The Biggest, 315.

44

Pyne, Burning Bush, 191.

Tadimeti 15 Australian landscape spilled over into domestic life and created long-term ripple effects. Without the ability to hunt, Australians likely relied more on collecting shrubs and tubers for sustenance, thus restructuring their diets and lifestyles. Different fires would have been needed to adapt to this change, impacting the vegetation that would grow and disrupting the general ecosystem.

Additionally, European fire impacted the ability for indigenous tribes to shift from a predominantly hunting-based lifestyle, as the disruption of biota and vegetation was so unpredictable that indigenous tribes may have struggled to predict the fires that were necessary.

Fire was inextricably linked to indigenous society for thousands of years, and any disruption could upend their entire way of life. Pyne articulates the intricate and involved role fire had in indigenous and Australian society: The dependence on fire was perhaps too total; the reliance on fire, for all the subtlety of its usage, too singular. Once committed to a fire-dependent society, anything that altered the status of fire or fuels would ripple catastrophically throughout the social and ecological system. Add new ignitions, remove old flora, alter the seasonal timing of fires—such changes would selectively reorder a biota. Tease apart the fuel structure and a whole ecosystem could unravel. While their reliance on the firestick made Aborigines a power in Old Australia, the society that lived by the firestick could also die by it. A landscape shaped by fire could be seized by more powerful fire.45 The issue of the Europeans was not a problem that could be solved with fire. Indigenous tribes’ precious tool was rendered useless and negatively impacted their survival prospects.

45

Pyne, 84.

Tadimeti 16 Frontier Conflict Across Australia, fire instigated conflict between European settlers and indigenous tribes, both through direct clashes and indirectly through landscape destabilization. Just as fire was central in the conflict between Marion du Fresne and local indigenous tribes in Tasmania, the primary reason for indigenous decline during the Black War, a period of frontier violence in Tasmania, was fire.

While French settlers first landed on Tasmania following Marion du Fresne’s initial interactions with local tribes, the British took control of the island in 1803.46 During this time, England was engaged in the Napoleonic Wars with France. As a result, the first British settlements on Tasmania were essentially abandoned and forced into self-sufficiency for survival. Initially, settlers relied on kangaroo meat for food and utilized their fur for clothing.

However, as the kangaroo population near the British settlements declined, settlers began interacting with tribes as they traveled deeper into indigenous territory, sparking conflict between the explorers and the indigenous populations who resisted their encroachment.47 Early small-scale conflicts fueled animosity between the two sides and sowed the seeds for large-scale violence in the following years.

Settlement took place in the early 1820s as convicts, opportunistic freemen, and soldiers colonized much of the island.48 Given the nomadic lifestyles tribes led, tribal populations probably discovered rather quickly during their explorations that white settlers were expanding into their territories. Peaceful interactions between settlers and local tribal populations were

46

Clements, Black War, 19.

47

Clements 19.

48

West, History of Tasmania, 2:20.

Tadimeti 17 common in the early years of colonization, as the British relied on indigenous knowledge to survive without mainland support, but by the mid 1820s they were few and far between. When white settlers advanced and forcefully evicted indigenous tribes, tribes often responded with hostility and attacked British settlements and roving parties. As the waves of British settlers gradually grew in size and frequency, indigenous Tasmanians quickly realized war was inevitable.49 As James Bonwick noted, “the precise line of actual hostility cannot be determined. ... Almost as soon as acquaintance was made conflict commenced.”50 It is important not to view the conflict between both parties as a fight of good versus evil. Rather, both sides genuinely felt victimized and believed that warring was necessary for survival. As Tasmanian historian Nicholas Clements states, “colonists felt trapped, powerless and terrified, and the natives were in essentially the same predicament. It is surely not surprising that there were people on both sides who believed exterminating the enemy was the only way to restore peace.”51 Within this historical context, fire catalyzed conflict between the two parties on a direct physical level and a cultural level. Tribes hurled fire sticks at Europeans, who retaliated with firearms. Through a scorched-earth strategy, both in the military and literal sense of the term, tribal populations burned entire settlements and horse pathways to limit European excursions.52 These interactions extended beyond Tasmania as tribes across Australia utilized fire to push back European encroachment. Derived from the techniques tribes used to hunt animals, indigenous

49

Clements, Black War, 41.

50

Bonwick, The Last, 28.

51

Clements, Black War, 58.

52

Clements, 60.

Tadimeti 18 tribes indiscriminately burned European farming settlements, barns, fields, and houses.53 These aggressive tactics likely spurred Europeans to retaliate with full-scale war, as settlers frequently petitioned colonial governments for permission to kill indigenous populations as retaliation.54 Thus, fire ultimately sparked war between the two sides. Had Tasmanian retaliation been solely confined to hand-to-hand combat with spears and ambushes, it is likely that European settlers would have easily repelled them with firearms and continued their encroachments without actual battles. Given the effectiveness of fire as a debilitating force and the fear colonists had of fire burning their entire settlements, war between both sides was guaranteed.

Intrinsic cultural differences between indigenous populations and European colonizers facilitated fire-driven conflict. Landscape burning conducted by tribes was in accordance with their nomadic lifestyle: tribes could burn a plot of land, move away, and return to hunt animals attracted to the fresh vegetation. European settlement culture, on the other hand, was not conducive to frequent burning. Regardless of malicious intent, European settlers viewed indigenous fires as dangerous to their way of life. As Pyne puts it, “The contrasts and conflicts intensified where Europeans erected towns. Permanent settlement—whether as a penal state or a Wakefield-inspired planned colony—was incompatible with broadcast fire, which always favored some kind of nomadism.”55

53

Pyne, Burning Bush, 191.

54

Clements, Black War, 43.

55

Pyne, Burning Bush, 192.

Tadimeti 19 Campfire Ambushes Most of the colonists sent to Tasmania were men, creating a large gender imbalance that fueled demand for native women among the settlers. Australian journalist Henry Melville wrote about his time in Tasmania during the early nineteenth century, describing how settlers “thought little or nothing of destroying the men for the sake of carrying to their huts the females of the tribes.”56 Abducting women for sexual gratification was, according to Nicholas Clements, “the most important proximate trigger for the Black War.”57 Few women traveled to Australia as part of colonization efforts, and the vast majority of women who did come were wives of landowners and overseers, not servants and convicts who primarily worked in the frontlines in frequent contact with indigenous populations.

The abduction of women would have been arduous without indigenous reliance on fire.

As Tasmanian tribes were more familiar with the landscape than British colonizers, the predominant method that settlers could use to capture women was through abducting them at night when they rested near their campsites. Sealers and merchants would look for signs of smoke to find victims to capture.58 The light given off by campfires alerted settlers to the location of indigenous settlements, while the dark of the night shielded the invaders from being noticed. Because of their reliance on fire, tribes conducted a nomadic lifestyle without protected and shielded settlements that could guard them against invasions. Further, fire’s central role in indigenous society meant families gathered around a fire for warmth and protection each night.

56

Henry Melville, The History of Van Diemen’s Land: From the Year 1824 to 1835, Inclusive; During the Administration of Lieutenant-Governor George Author (Sydney: Horwitz-Grahame, 1965), 31, quoted in Clements, Black War, 49.

57

Clements, Black War, 49.

58

Clements, 73.

Tadimeti 20 Under the false illusion of security offered by fire, tribes opened themselves up to European invasions. As a result, tribes were placed in a double-bind: either relinquish their vital source of protection or allow themselves to be spotted by European invaders.

Losing women not only hindered domestic life, as they were primarily in charge of hearth management, cooking, and cultivating vegetables, but husbands and children also suffered from despair and low morale. According to George Robinson, British settler and mediator of conflict between both parties, children often “witnessed the massacre of their parents and their relations carried away into captivity.”59 By the late 1820s and early 1830s, nearly all eastern Tasmanian tribes suffered the psychological effects of these campfire ambush attacks.60 In some instances, tribes resorted to infanticide to eliminate a source of noise that could reveal the positions of campfires.61 This ultimately reduced the tribal populations and morphed the conflict to become a war of attrition. While the trauma of British invasions likely deterred some tribes from engaging in further conflict, instead leading them to resort to fleeing from British settlements, campfire ambushes often inspired revenge among tribal men.62 As a result, some tribes were further incentivized to continue fighting the settlers, an effort that was already one-sided due to technological limitations, ultimately leading to the decline of indigenous populations.

In addition to abducting women, colonists ambushed campsites for military purposes as well. Colonists who were looking for indigenous Tasmanians often traveled to the peaks of

59

George Augustus Robinson, Friendly Mission: The Tasmanian Journals and Papers of George Augustus Robinson, 1829-1834, 2, illustrated, revised ed. (Launceston, Tasmania: Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, 2008, quoted in Clements, Black War, 113.

60

Clements, Black War, 113.

61

Clements, 118.

62

Clements, 39.

Tadimeti 21 nearby hills to look for smoke and locate campsites to attack at night.63 These ambushes were incredibly effective at eliminating indigenous forces and were heavily utilized during the war.64 Tribes were likely weary from having to continuously spot ambushes, inhibiting their capabilities to resist. Stopping indigenous Tasmanian tribes during the day proved to be a significant challenge as settlers were less familiar with the landscape. Clements writes: Vigilantes ... realised the only way to counter the “excessive cunning of the natives” was to attack them at their most vulnerable—when they were asleep.... The blacks had to be stopped, and although the campfire ambush was not the most “honourable” mode of warfare, it was certainly the most effective.... Aborigines ... were rarely caught off guard in daylight hours, but when the sun went down, the tables of vulnerability turned against them. Hundreds were ultimately shot because of the need to light campfires. Smoke was the flag that repeatedly gave away their location, and yet, fires were indispensable.65 Tribes continued igniting campfires despite these attacks partly for spiritual reasons: tribal religions were centered around the safety of fire repelling night demons and spirits.66 Forfeiting the campfire meant succumbing to evil spirits, but tribal reliance on fire instead led to their fall at the hands of European ambushes and muskets.67 This fear of the dark is a key reason indigenous Tasmanian tribes refused to attack at night, despite any strategic advantages they might have

63

Clements, 75.

64

Bonwick, The Last, 64.

65

Clements, Black War, 110.

66

West, History of Tasmania, 2: 30.

67

West, 2: 30.

Tadimeti 22 obtained. Even if indigenous Tasmanian tribes could escape the campfire ambush, they abandoned their key protector, fire, and resisting hypothermia was an additional challenge they dealt with.68 Tribes were still capable of adapting to these challenges. Indigenous Tasmanian tribes ignited smaller fires and formed their campsites in more discrete locations. On occasion, they would ignite decoy fires to lure Europeans into ambushes, or they would place sentries at the fake campsites to alert the presence of invaders.69 However, given their overwhelming reliance on fire, any limits on its use crippled indigenous society. Indigenous Tasmanian tribes relied on plundering British settlements for clothing and blankets in the later part of the war, dangerous ventures that enabled settlers to easily kill desperate invaders, because they could not use campfires as sources of heat.70 The campfire was an incredibly vital part of indigenous society even beyond Tasmania, as ceremonies, social gatherings, storytelling, and propagation of indigenous culture all relied on the campfire.71 Beyond the physical impacts of campfire ambushes and hypothermia, the social and mental implications of indigenous overreliance on fire and their forced suppression of the element were profound.

Fighting Fire with Fire: Lasting Implications of Indigenous Fire In recent years, there has been a call to return to indigenous landscape management practices involving the intentional use of fire to burn away brush and vegetation that can fuel

68

Clements, Black War, 66.

69

Robinson, Friendly Mission, 124.

70

Clements, Black War, 66.

71

Pyne, Burning Bush, 105.

Tadimeti 23 larger megafires. These megafires are intense, can significantly damage wildlife, and force evacuations across the Australian continent, particularly in hot and dry regions where larger fires are more susceptible to start. Further, these megafires pollute significant amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and accelerate anthropogenic-driven climate change, creating hotter and drier conditions that will continue to fuel these megafires in the future. As a result, the Australian government has partnered with local indigenous tribes and given them the jurisdiction to ignite these intentional fires across public lands through established fire mitigation programs.72 These programs are well accepted in regions further away from densely populated regions of Australia, as they pose little danger to human life, and intentional fires generate lesser public backlash when the thick smoke that is subsequently produced affects fewer people who could potentially criticize the programs.73 From starting as a ubiquitous practice spanning tens of thousands of years, to its rapid suppression by European colonizers, to its co-option by those same settlers to transplant a western society while simultaneously denying the Australian landscape to the indigenous tribes, to its eventual acceptance by modern science as a technique capable of mitigating the risk of dangerous megafires, the indigenous use of fire in Australia has come full circle. This journey and fire’s ultimate acceptance in Australian society is not entirely unexpected: it is not surprising that an indigenous practice that managed the landscape successfully for millennia has ecological merits, even if science has only relatively recently begun to see its true value. Though indigenous tribes likely did not intend to prevent the risk of large fires when they used fire in their societies,

72

Thomas Fuller, “Reducing Fire, and Cutting Carbon Emissions, the Aboriginal Way,” New York Times, January 16, 2020, accessed July 25, 2020.

73

Fuller, “Reducing Fire.”

Tadimeti 24 they ultimately shaped the Australian landscape to one that became dependent on a fine-tuned cycle of fire use. While a rise in fire suppression and European-caused landscape disturbances led to a rapid decline of an indigenous society that was wholly dependent on fire, a few hundred years of fire mitigation is insufficient time to enable an Australian biota that was heavily impacted by fire for thousands of years to thrive in the absence of fire. An accumulation of fuels and tinder are natural products of a system of heavy fire use, and the Australian megafires that subsequently resulted are simply products of the European system of fire suppression and cooption. The heavy fires Australia experienced in recent years is a complex, nuanced affair with multiple proximate causes and cannot be traced to a singular historical event like the arrival of European settlers. However, it is clear that the indigenous use of fire had practical benefits that reached beyond their societies, and its suppression by European settlers severely disrupted Australia and created long-lasting effects that are still felt today.

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Tadimeti 26 Robinson, George Augustus. Friendly Mission: The Tasmanian Journals and Papers of George Augustus Robinson, 1829-1834. 2, illustrated, revised ed. Launceston, Tasmania: Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, 2008. First published by Indiana University.

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