Woolwonga

The Woolwonga were an indigenous Australian people of the Northern Territory, reputed to have been almost completely exterminated in the 1880s in reprisal for an incident in which some members of the tribe speared 4 miners.^[1][2]

Ecology

The Woolwonga tribe lived in the Pine Creek/Mount Bundy area.^[2]

History

Copper mining discovered near Mt.Haywood in 1882 led to the development of a settlement on tribal lands along the Daly River soon afterwards, and members of the Woolwonga tribe were drawn to the site, and employed there. Starting on 3 September 1884, several Woolwonga murdered four European settlers and in a reprisal known as the Coppermine massacres, Francis Herbert Sachse who ran a castle station and also managed the mine, led the massacre at Blackfellow Creek, where an estimated 150 natives were shot, leading to their effective extermination. The pogrom continued for some years, decimating also the Mulluk-Mulluk tribe.^[2][3]

Four Woolwonga men,Tommy, Jimmy, Daly, and Ajibbingwagne, were put on trial for the killings of 4 settlers, Johannes Lubrecht Noltenius, Jack Landers, Henry Houschildt and Schollert.^[4][5] The Jesuit mission diary records Sachse as still waging his campaign against the Woolwonga 4 years later, in 1888.

Charlie Yingi, known as Long Legged Charlie, one of the four Aboriginal men charged for the killings, was cleared eventually and settled at the Jesuit Mission on the Daly River later sentenced to death for the Coppermine killing also settled at the mission.^[2]

In 2014 there came to light a document indicating that one child of Woolwonga parentage had been registered in the census undertaken in 1889, and that by virtue of this fact, her descendants moved to assert native title rights to the old Woolwonga hunting grounds.^[1]

Notes and references

Notes

1. Purtill 2014.
2. Ganter 2015.
3. Reid 1990, pp. 99ff..
4. Roberts 1886, p. 9.
5. Court Proceedings 1884.

References

• "Court Proceedings". The Northern Territory Times & Gazette. 27 December 1884.
• Ganter, Regina (2015). "German Missionaries in Australia: Daly River (1886-1899)". Griffith University.
• Roberts, Henry (20 February 1886). "The Murders at the Daly River Copper Mine: Statement of the Sole Survivor". South Australian Weekly Chronicle.
• Reid, Gordon (1990). A Picnic with the Natives: Aboriginal-European Relations in the Northern Territory to 1910. Melbourne University Press. ISBN 978-0-522-84419-1.

• Purtill, James (25 September 2014). "'Forgotten' Woolwonga tribe demand recognition 130 years after 'extermination')". ABC News.
• Stanner, W. E. H. (December 1933). "Ceremonial Economics of the Mulluk Mulluk and Madngella Tribes of the Daly River,North Australia. A Preliminary Paper". 4 (2). Oceania: 156–175.