Site NameHornet Bank aftermath (3)
This massacre is part of a group of massacres
Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander Place Name
Language Group, Nation or PeopleYiman
Present State/TerritoryQLD
Colony/State/Territory at the timeNSW
Police DistrictTaroom
Latitude-25.699
Longitude149.264
DateBetween 1 Apr 1858 and 30 Apr 1858
Attack TimeDay
VictimsAboriginal or Torres Strait Islander People
Victim DescriptionsAboriginal
Victims Killed20
Victims Killed NotesMen and women.
AttackersColonists
Attacker DescriptionsNative Police
Attackers Killed0
Attackers Killed Notes
TransportHorse
MotiveReprisal
Weapons UsedCarbine(s), Cutlass/Cutlasses
NarrativeFollowing the massacre of the Fraser family at Hornet Bank station on the Dawson River in November 1857, three large scale reprisals of the Yiman people took place. The first was carried out by a posse of local settlers (see Hornet Bank aftermath (1)); and the second by two surviving men of the Fraser family (Hornet Bank aftermath (2)).
The third was carried out by detachments of native police who hunted the Yiman down from the ranges of the Upper Dawson River in April 1858 (Richards 2008, pp 63-4). On 15th March 1858 W. Cryand wrote to Government Resident at Moreton Bay saying, '...while the Colonial Secretary is quite prepared to hear, after the numerous murders and other acts of atrocity committed by the Aborigines in the Southern Districts, that summary and severe punishment had ensued, he regrets to notice in the reports of Lieutenants Murray and Powell expressions which he cannot permit to pass by without special notice. Lieutenant Murray in his letter to the Commandant of the 19 January last says "a considerable number of Blacks concerned in the late outrage have been killed by the Police, finding that they were allowed up to the Station and evidently thinking that their evil deeds had been forgotten"; and the expression to which the Colonial Secretary Secretary entertains objection is that portion of the above that is underlined. It, I am to say, would justify the inference that unawares and possibly while entrapped within reach of gun shot, they were in cold blood destroyed. But a still more objectionable expression occurs in Lieutenant Powell's letter of 16th December last, in which he reports that in dispersing a large party of Blacks some of them were shot including "three Gins as they were running away"... The murder of the Fraser Family with the attendant circumstances required that the perpetrators of such monstrous enormities should be punished in the severest manner wherever they could be found; but I am desired to state that there is something abhorrent to the feeling of humanity to read, even on that case, of three Gins being shot dead as they were running away, and the Colonial Secretary trusts that on any future occasion should a similar occurrence be reported, you will make enquiry at once into the matter in order to check the feeling that the lives even of the most ignorant savages may be unnecessarily taken from them.' (QSA RES/2 58/920 ITM3681987)
SourcesRichards 2008, pp 63-4; QSA RES/2 58/920 Colonial Secretary at Sydney to the Government Resident at Moreton Bay (DR110707) ITM3681987 https://www.archivessearch.qld.gov.au/items/ITM3681987 (Sources PDF)
Corroboration Rating**