| Narrative | According to The Courier, the Native Police under Lieutenant Wheeler massacred seven Aboriginal people, including Harry Pring, who had done nothing to provoke this action. Lieutenant Wheeler did not deny this but claimed that he had been instructed to 'disperse' Aboriginal people where ever they gathered.
'The result of our investigations has been the establishment of the truth of all that we previously asserted, and the confirmation of the impression that the attack upon the blacks was most wanton and unprovoked. It appears that, upon the occasion of the massacre, the blacks were holding a corroboree, and that, while they were so engaged, the Native Police surprised their camp, fired upon them, and killed seven men and one gin, besides wounding others, one of whom, an old gin, has not yet recovered. Most of the bodies have been removed by the blacks themselves, but two were still lying at the scene of the slaughter when one of our informants last visited the spot. One of the men shot was well known about town by the soubriquet of Harry Pring, and was not altogether an immaculate being, but we are not aware that his murderers were justified in shooting him down in cold blood, together with seven of his companions. We cannot gather that the blacks had lately been troublesome in the locality where the massacre occurred; our informants state positively that they had been very peaceably and quietly disposed of late, and had done nothing to justify the attack made by the Native Police. Lieutenant Wheeler, the officer in charge of the detachment, we are told defends his conduct on the ground that his instructions compel him to disperse the blacks wherever they may have congregated, but we have yet to learn that those instructions warrant such an act as that to which we refer.' (Courier, October 4, 1862, p 2). |
