not I was not to stand still and suffer either my self or those who were with me to be knocked on the head.’ For once, Joseph Banks agreed with him. He thought the Maori were shockingly eager to fight, almost making a game of it: ‘They always attacked, though seldom seeming to mean more than to provoke us to show them what we were able to do in this case. By many trials we found that good usage and fair words would not avail the least with them, nor would they be convinced by the noise of our firearms alone that they were superior to theirs.’ The only thing to do was to fire to wound, because ‘as soon as they had felt the smart of even a load of small shot and had time allowed them to recollect themselves from the effects of their artificial courage...they were sensible of our generosity in not taking the advantage of our superiority’. For Banks gunfire, not music, was the way to the savage heart.
Official instructions, however utopian, have a longer life than the stories drawn from hard experience. Governor Phillip brought a determination verging on obstinacy to the business of persuading the local population to friendship; a determination rare, possibly unique, in the gruff annals of imperialism. He pursued Morton’s strategies from refusing to use guns, even at the cost of taking casualties, down to the detail of the ribbons and looking-glasses. (It is true that he also resorted to kidnap to convey his benevolent intentions, but that rough way to useful intercourse predates Columbus.) In a letter probably written in the July of that first hectic year of 1788 he gave the following detailed observations on the local inhabitants. (The capitals might imply pomposity to us, but not to a contemporary):
The Natives are far more numerous than expected, I reckon from fourteen to sixteen hundred in this Harbour, Broken Bay, and Botany Bay, and once [we fell in with] Two hundred and twelve Men in one part...The Women are constantly employed in the Canoes where I have seen them big with Child, and with very young Infants at their Breasts, they seem less fond of ornaments than the men. And I have [never?] seen them with their hair Ornamented with the Teeth of Dogs [...] etc. as the Hair of the Men is frequently Ornamented.
I have reason to think that the Men do not want personal Courage [,] they readily place a confidence and appear to be a friendly and inoffensive people unless made Angry and which the most trifling circumstance does at times. Three convicts have been killed by them in the Woods and I have no doubt but that the Convicts were the [aggressors?].
They...are fond of any very Soft Musick, and will attend to singing any of the Words which they very readily repeat. But I know very little at present of the people. They never come into the Camp, and I have had few hours to seek them out. There are several roots which they Eat, and I have seen the Bones of the Kangurroo and flying Squirrel at the entrance to their huts, but Fish is their principal support which on these Shores is very scarce and I believe many of them are Starving.
Contrast this with Darwin’s dismissive diagnoses regarding the Tierra del Fuegian ‘savages’ a mere fifty years later. Phillip grants no gulf in nature. We are still in the dawn of the world, with friendship between unlike peoples a blossoming hope—given the universality of reason and local good will.
Phillip was further disarmed by his first meetings with Australians, when his calm, weaponless advance and the offering of gifts led to the consummation of hand meeting hand in The Handshake, to him a universal pledge of peace and friendship. (That same experiment could turn out differently. The historian Greg Dening tells a story of a British officer who was powerfully offended when another native on another beach grasped his extended hand, turned it over to see if it had anything in it—and then let it drop. The Britisher crossly concluded that these were an unpleasantly avaricious people.)
Phillip’s serene account of the Australians’ response to the British presence is obliquely confirmed by the gleeful descriptions George Worgan provided his brother in a letter written a month later. Worgan told of a string of meetings with locals whom he described as behaving like excited children at a Christmas party, holding out their hands for their presents, laughing heartily, jumping ‘extravagantly’, and whooping with pleasure as they examined the clothes, hats and hair of the newcomers. They also allowed themselves to be tricked out in ‘different coloured Papers, and Fools’-Caps which pleased them mightily’. Even allowing for Worgan’s determined jocularity these still look like astonishingly amiable meetings, incorporating startling hands-on intimacies. Worgan describes ‘a Fellow’ picking up a quill and ‘trying to poke it through my Nose and two or three other Gentlemen’s’, as he checked to see whether their nasal septums were pierced or not, and then giving up and ‘shewing Us that he could not wear it in his own, and shaking his head’.
Phillip, reading these scenes not with Worgan’s irony but for the trusting good will he thought he saw demonstrated, was confirmed in his chosen policy. That policy and his personal example would keep the British and the local men on sufficiently peaceful terms for as long as they were under his eye. But he could not control attitudes. Here is a paragraph from Worgan, again to his brother, on what he really thought about the new people, beginning with his estimation of the charms of their women.
‘It must be merely from the Curiosity, to see how they would behave...that one would be induced to touch one of Them, for they are Ugly to Disgust, in their countenances and stink of Fish-Oil and Smoke, most sweetly.’ They are shapely enough; he allows that if some of them were cleaned up they might excite lust ‘even in the frigid breast of a philosopher’, but in their natural state the fish-oil and soot would keep more than philosophers away. He concludes: ‘To sum up the Qualities Personal and mental...they appear to be an Active, Volatile, Unoffending, Happy, Merry, Funny, Laughing, Good-natured, Nasty Dirty, race of human Creatures as ever lived in a state of Savageness.’ (Worgan’s italics throughout.) He knew these people to be ‘savages’, and therefore creatures utterly unlike himself.
Pragmatic David Collins recognised the fish oil to be a sensible protection against both the ferocious local mosquitoes and the cold. Nonetheless he acknowledged that ‘the oil, together with the perspiration from their bodies, produces, in hot weather, a most horrible stench’ (the British had made landfall in late January, on the brink of the hottest month). He recorded he had seen some natives ‘with the entrails of fish frying in the burning sun upon their heads, until the oil ran down over their foreheads’. Later we will see that the first thing the British did with their kidnap victims was to dump them in a tub, crop their hair and give them a thorough scrubbing before stuffing them into shirts, trousers and jackets. We can’t know what the victims thought about any of this, only that they were terrified. It is also likely that the Australians found the stink of unwashed British flesh sweating in unwashed woollen clothing in Sydney heat at least as repellent, but in such encounters it is the literate who do all the complaining.
Less contemptuous and more curious observers than Worgan, and less complacent ones than Phillip, could be baffled as to Australian intentions. Surgeon John White had this to say about an unexpected and potentially dangerous encounter with ‘about three hundred natives’ at Botany Bay on 1 June:
This was the greatest number of the natives we had ever seen together since our coming among them. What could be the cause of their assembling in such great numbers gave rise to a variety of conjectures. Some thought they were going to war among themselves. Others conjectured that some of them had been concerned in the murder of our men, notwithstanding we did not meet with the smallest trace to countenance such an opinion, and that, fearing we should revenge it, they had formed this convention in order to defend themselves against us. Others imagined that the assemblage might be occasioned by a burial, a marriage, or some religious meeting.
‘A burial, a marriage, or some religious meeting’—or perhaps a preparation for war. It was certainly a deeply uncanny situation. It is against this background of casual contempt and intelligent anxiety that we have to locate Phillip’s determined optimism. From the beginning, and remarkably, he recognised the Australians’ wants and expressions to be as powerfully felt as his own, and as we will see he acknowledged some conflicts. But he also remained persuaded of something not at all evident: that in time the Australians would
