The Myall Creek massacre was the killing of at least 28 unarmed Aboriginal people in the Colony of New South Wales by eight colonists on 10 June 1838 at the Myall Creek in the north of the colony. Seven perpetrators were convicted of murder and hanged.
This was one of the few alleged massacres of Aboriginal people to have been proven in court. After two trials, seven perpetrators of twelve accused were found guilty of murder and sentenced to death by hanging. Four men were never retried on additional charges following their acquittal in the first trial. The leader of the perpetrators, free settler John Henry Fleming, evaded arrest and was never tried. The trials and guilty verdicts sparked extreme controversy within New South Wales settler society.
Description of the massacre
In the 1830s white settlers were expanding into the northern area of the colony of New South Wales (New England), near the Gwydir River, the traditional lands of the Kamilaroi people. These colonists ran livestock and cultivated crops which led to competition for resources. The Aboriginal people resisted, sometimes attacking livestock or settlers, and there was violence on both sides.
John Henry Fleming, a free man from Mungie Bundie Run near Moree, gathered a group of armed men to respond. They consisted of eleven stockmen, both former convicts and assigned convicts (who were essentially indentured workers to employers). Ten were white Europeans and one, John Johnstone, was a black African. They arrived by horseback at Henry Dangar's Myall Creek station in New England on 9 June 1838.
A group of approximately thirty-five Aboriginal people were camped near the huts of the station. They were part of the Wirraayaraay (also spelled 'Weraerai') group who belonged to the Kamilaroi people. They had been invited a few weeks before by Charles Kilmeister (or Kilminister), one of the convict stockmen, to camp at the station for safety and protection from the gangs of marauding stockmen in the district. These whites were slaughtering any Aboriginal people they could find.
These Aboriginal people had previously been camped peacefully at Peter MacIntyre's station at Keera for a few months. They were well known to the whites. Most of them had been assigned such English names as Daddy, King Sandy, Joey, Martha and Charley. Some of the children already spoke a certain amount of English.
When the stockmen rode into their camp, the Wirraayaraay fled to Kilmeister's hut pleading for protection.
George Anderson, the station hut keeper, asked the white men what they were going to do with the Aboriginal people. John Russell said they were going to "take them over the back of the range and frighten them". The stockmen entered the hut, tied the Aboriginal people to a long tether rope and led them away.
The stockmen took the group to a gully on the side of the ridge about 800 m (2,600 ft) to the west of the station huts. There they killed them all except for one woman, who they kept with them and gang raped for the next couple of days. The 28 corpses found at the site were mostly women, children, and old men. Ten younger men were away on a neighbouring station, having been hired to ring-bark trees. Apparently most of the people were slaughtered with swords. George Anderson, who refused to join the massacre, said he heard only two shots. Unlike Anderson, Charles Kilmeister joined the slaughter.
Testimony was later given at trial that the stockmen had beheaded the children. They forced the men and women to run as far as they could between the stockyard fence and a line of sword-wielding stockmen, who hacked at them as they passed. After the massacre, Fleming and his gang rode off looking to kill the men who they knew had gone to the neighbouring station.
Those Aboriginal men returned to Myall Creek that night and left after being warned that the killers would be returning. When the whites returned to Myall two days later, they dismembered and burnt the bodies before resuming the search for the remaining people.
The ten Wirraayaraay had gone to MacIntyre's station at Keera, 30 kilometres to the south-east. There between 10 and 20 Aboriginal people were soon reported as murdered and their bodies were burned on a large fire. Many suspect this massacre was committed by the same stockmen as at Myall Creek. After several days of heavy drinking, the party dispersed.
When William Hobbs, the manager of Myall Creek station, returned several days later and discovered the bodies, he counted up to twenty-eight (as they were beheaded and dismembered, he had difficulty determining the exact number). He decided to report the incident but Kilmeister initially talked him out of it. Hobbs discussed it with a neighbouring station overseer, Thomas Foster. He told squatter Frederick Foot, who rode to Sydney to report it to the new Governor, George Gipps. Supported by Attorney General John Plunkett, Gipps ordered Police Magistrate Edward Denny Day at Muswellbrook to investigate the massacre.
Day conducted a thorough investigation although the bodies had by then been removed from the massacre site, and only a few bone fragments remained. He arrested eleven of the twelve perpetrators. The only one to escape was John Fleming, the leader and only free man. George Anderson was crucial in identifying the arrested men. He had initially refused to name any but, after learning that the massacre had been planned more than a week earlier to coincide with the absence of Hobbs, he agreed to identify the killers to the magistrate.
Trials
Beginning on 15 November 1838, the case was heard before the Chief Justice of New South Wales, James Dowling. The accused were represented by three of the colony's foremost barristers, William Foster, William à Beckett and Richard Windeyer, paid for by an association of landowners and stockmen from the Hunter Valley and Liverpool Plains region. Henry Dangar, the owner of the Myall Creek station, was among those supporting the defence.
This secret group called themselves The Black Association. They were led by a local magistrate, who apparently used the influence of his office to gain access to the prisoners in Sydney. He told them to "stick together and say nothing". Not one of the eleven accused gave evidence against their co-accused at the trial. Governor Gipps attributed their silence to the magistrate's influence.
First trial
R. v. Kilmeister (No. 1) – The station hutkeeper, George Anderson, was the only white witness and key for the prosecution, conducted by Attorney General Plunkett and Roger Therry as his junior counsel. He told the court how the eleven men had tied the victims together, and led them away. He also said that Edward Foley, one of the perpetrators, had shown him a sword covered with blood. Anderson's testimony was supported by William Hobbs and Magistrate Day, who had conducted the police investigation. The defence's case rested solely on the argument that the dismembered bodies could not be identified accurately.
Justice Dowling advised the jury that the law made no distinction between the murder of an Aboriginal person and the murder of a European person. The jury, after deliberating for twenty minutes, found all eleven men 'not guilty.' A letter to the editor of The Australian on 8 December 1838 alleged that one of the jurors had said privately that although he considered the men guilty of murder, he could not convict a white man of killing an Aboriginal person, he purportedly said:
"I look on the blacks (said this enlightened and philanthropic juror) as a set of monkeys and the sooner they are exterminated from the face of the earth the better. I would never consent to hang a white man for a black one. I knew well they were guilty of murder, but I, for one, would never see a white man suffer for shooting a black"
The letter writer said he did not hear these statements directly, but had spoken to a second man who told him he had heard a juror say it. The letter writer continued, "I leave you, Sir, and the community to determine on the fitness of this white savage to perform the office of a juryman under any circumstance".
Second trial
R. v. Kilmeister (No. 2) – Attorney-General Plunkett requested the judge to remand the prisoners in custody awaiting further charges from the same incident. Although all eleven were remanded in custody, only seven faced a second trial. The second trial was held on 27 November. Only 28 of the 48 men called up for jury service turned up. Later it was learned that the Black Association had intimidated many into staying away.
The trial started on 29 November under Justice Burton. Anderson, who had been the key witness at the first trial, testified again. He told the court:
While Master was away, some men came on a Saturday, about 10; I cannot say how many days after master left; they came on horseback, armed with muskets and swords and pistols; all were armed ... the blacks, when they saw the men coming, ran into our hut, and the men then, all of them, got off their horses; I asked what they were going to do with the blacks, and Russel said, "We are going to take them over the back of the range, to frighten them".
Anderson testified that the Aboriginal people in the hut had cried out to him for assistance. He said two women were left behind at the huts, one "because she was good-looking, they said so". He said that a young girl who had been left behind attempted to follow her mother (who was tied up with the others). Anderson took her back to he hut. He said two young Aboriginal boys escaped by hiding in the creek. Anderson also testified about the perpetrators' return and the burning of the bodies.
I [Anderson] saw smoke in the same direction they went; this was soon after they went with the firesticks ... Fleming told Kilmeister to go up by-and-by and put the logs of wood together, and be sure that all [of the remains] was consumed ... the girls they left, and the two boys, and the child I sent away with 10 black fellows that went away in the morning ... I did not like to keep them, as the men might come back and kill them.
Anderson said he wanted to speak the whole truth at the second trial. He also said he did not seek to be rewarded for testifying, rather he asked "only for protection". The trial continued until 2 am on 30 November, when the jury found the seven men guilty. Initially, the foreman had stated that the men had been found 'not guilty'. However, one juror immediately rose and stated that there had been a mistake. They had only acquitted the defendants on separate charges. However, they had found the men guilty of the murder of a single six-year-old Aboriginal child whose name was unknown. According to the indictment, the murder had been committed "by shooting with a pistol, cutting with a sword, and beating, casting into a fire, and keeping the child there until death ensued".
On 5 December, all of the defendants were sentenced to death by hanging. At sentencing, Justice Burton gave a speech. A reporter present summarized what Burton, who teared up as he spoke, said.