Truganini

Truganini
Truganini, c. 1866
Born	c. 1812 Recherche Bay, Van Diemen's Land, Colony of New South Wales
Died	(1876-05-08)8 May 1876 (aged about 64) Hobart, Colony of Tasmania

Truganini (/ˌtruːɡəˈnɪniː/ TROO-gə-NIN-ee; c. 1812 – 8 May 1876) was an Aboriginal Tasmanian woman who was widely, though incorrectly, described as the last surviving Aboriginal Tasmanian. A member of the Nuenonne people, she grew up on Bruny Island in what is now south-eastern Tasmania. During her teenage years, she saw the death and displacement of much of Tasmania's Aboriginal population as a result of European colonisation during the Black War. She became a guide to the colonial official George Augustus Robinson and accompanied him on a series of expeditions that resulted in the exile of Tasmania's remaining Aboriginal population.

Truganini was exiled as well, to the Wybalenna Aboriginal Establishment on Flinders Island at the conclusion of the expeditions in 1835. She later spent time in the Port Phillip District (modern-day Victoria), where she became a fugitive and was tried alongside four others for the murder of a pair of whalers. After being acquitted of the crime, she was returned to Wybalenna and was eventually moved to Oyster Cove. By 1872, she was the only Aboriginal resident left at Oyster Cove and began to be mythologised as the last of her race, attracting the fascination of colonial scientists and the settler population.

After Truganini's death in 1876, the colonial Tasmanian government declared the island's Aboriginal population extinct. Truganini became a symbol of her people's supposed extinction and has featured prominently in art, music, and literature. The narrative that Truganini was the last Aboriginal Tasmanian has been rejected by scholars and by the contemporary Aboriginal Tasmanian community as part of efforts to contest the popular myth of Aboriginal Tasmanian extinction. Once cast as the final survivor of a race doomed to extinction, she has since been reframed by some as a memorial to the genocide of Indigenous Australians, and claimed by others as an anti-colonial resistance figure.

Early life and people

Truganini was born around 1812 at Recherche Bay in southern Tasmania (then known as Van Diemen's Land). She was the youngest daughter of Manganerer, the senior man of the Nuenonne clan. Nuenonne country included Bruny Island and the coastal area of the Tasmanian mainland between Recherche Bay and Oyster Cove. Truganini's mother, with whom Manganerer had at least three daughters, was likely a member of the Ninine people. The Ninine were another clan group from the Nuenonne's language group whose country encompassed the area surrounding Port Davey.

By the time Truganini was born, the Nuenonne population had begun to encounter British colonisation. James Cook first landed on Bruny Island at Adventure Bay in 1777. Within a few decades, former convicts who had been transported to Australia began to conduct raids on Aboriginal communities to kidnap women. When a group of French explorers and scientists visited Bruny Island in 1802, the Nuenonne they encountered were terrified of their guns, and the women refused to approach them. After the establishment of the city of Hobart in 1804, a large number of ships began to sail past Nuenonne country to access the Derwent River. At the beginning of the 19th century, the Aboriginal population of Tasmania numbered around 3000–8000, forming nine nations divided into around 50–100 clan groups. In 1819, the Aboriginal and settler populations of Tasmania were both around 5000, with the latter overwhelmingly male; by 1830, the settler population had grown to 23,500.

Life at Missionary Bay

After the arrival of British settlers, the seal colonies that the Nuenonne relied on were soon destroyed. Many Nuenonne women were forced to trade sex for food with the settlers who had established whaling stations on the island. In 1816, Truganini's mother was murdered by a group of sailors, and in 1826 two of her sisters were kidnapped by a sealer. After the death of Truganini's mother, Manganerer married another woman and had at least one son. According to an unverified account published shortly before Truganini's death by the surveyor James Erskine Calder, around 1828 Truganini was abducted and raped by timber cutters. According to Calder's account, the timber cutters murdered two Nuenonne men, one of whom was her fiancé Paraweena, by throwing them out of a boat and cutting off their hands as they tried to clamber back in.

By the late 1820s, Tasmania was in the midst of a conflict between colonists and Aboriginal Tasmanians known as the Black War. The kidnapping of Aboriginal women was common, and retributive violence by both displaced Aboriginal Tasmanians and settlers was prevalent. In 1828, the colony's governor George Arthur set up military posts to divide the settled districts, from which Aboriginal Tasmanians were to be excluded, from the rest of the island. In November of that year, driven by fear of Aboriginal guerrilla violence amongst the settler population, he declared martial law within the settled districts. The order did not extend to Bruny Island, where the less hostile relationship between the two populations was seen as making the island a suitable site for an attempt at conciliation with the Indigenous population. Arthur appointed George Augustus Robinson to set up a ration station for the Aboriginal population and oversee the colonists' relationship with the Aboriginal communities on Bruny Island. Robinson, who had migrated from London to Tasmania in 1824 to work as a builder, was a devout Christian who expressed religious and humanitarian motivations. He wrote that he hoped his efforts—modelled on the resettlement of Native Americans in the United States—would save the Aboriginal Tasmanian population from extinction.

Robinson encountered Truganini in April 1829 while she was living amongst a group of convict woodcutters on the Tasmanian mainland. He brought her back to Bruny Island, where he established a Christian mission at Missionary Bay. He used Truganini's presence at the mission to entice her father and a small group of other Aboriginal people to join her. Robinson deplored the widespread trade in sex between Aboriginal women and settlers, and attempted to convert the mission's residents to Christianity and put them to work in exchange for extra rations. The mission quickly became stricken by disease, prompting its residents to seek to leave. Truganini eventually deserted the mission to live at the whaling station at Adventure Bay, running away from Robinson when he attempted to retrieve her that August. After the Nuenonne elder Woureddy—who Robinson viewed as an important ally—expressed a desire to marry Truganini, Robinson retrieved her from the whaling station. Despite initially expressing firm resistance, Truganini reluctantly agreed to marry Woureddy, and they were married in October 1829.

In 1829, a group of escaped convicts kidnapped Truganini's stepmother; Manganerer attempted to follow them in a canoe but was blown out to sea. By the time his canoe was spotted by a passing vessel, Manganerer's son had died and he himself was suffering from severe dehydration. When he returned to Missionary Bay, he found that almost the entirety of his clan group had died from disease. By early 1830, Manganerer had died from a sexually transmitted disease.

Guide for the "friendly mission"

In January 1830, Robinson obtained the governor's approval for what he termed a "friendly mission" to contact and gain the trust of the Aboriginal peoples of western and north-western Tasmania. He brought a group of Aboriginal guides, including Truganini, Woureddy, two men named Kikatapula and Maulboyheenner, and a woman named Pagerly, along with a handful of convicts. The party set out on foot from Recherche Bay on 3 February 1830. Robinson's series of expeditions, which would ultimately continue until 1834, have been described by the genocide scholar Tom Lawson as a "roving embassy" that eventually negotiated an end to the violent conflict between the settlers and the Aboriginal population.

Truganini, who was suffering from an advanced case of syphilis, collected food for the expedition party by diving for shellfish and gathering edible plants. She also entered into a sexual relationship with Robinson's convict foreman Alexander McKay. The group encountered a group of ten Ninine families shortly after passing Bathurst Harbour, and on 25 March 1830 they met another group and performed corroborees with them. During their journey, they learned of the increasingly violent massacres of Aboriginal Tasmanians taking place as part of the Black War. About 60 settlers and 300 Aboriginal Tasmanians had been killed over the preceding two years. They finished their journey in Launceston in October 1830, with Truganini so weakened that she could barely walk. With the colony under martial law, Truganini and the other Aboriginal guides were set to be imprisoned until an official secured their freedom and allowed Robinson's party to stay at his home.

By the time of their arrival in Launceston, the governor had announced a policy known as the "Black Line" that required every able-bodied male settler in Tasmania to join a militia. This militia would form two lines that would trap and remove every Aboriginal inhabitant of the settled districts. Robinson reached an agreement with the governor that his expedition party would attempt to locate and make peace with any Aboriginal groups who evaded the Black Line, and would resettle them on Swan Island until a more permanent resettlement site could be established. Robinson quickly set out with Truganini, Woureddy, an Aboriginal boy named Peevay, and two other guides to negotiate these groups' surrender before they could become victims of the Black Line. Their party persuaded some sealers to release Aboriginal women that they had enslaved, and convinced some Aboriginal groups, including one led by the warrior Mannalargenna, to accompany them to Swan Island after warning them of the approaching danger.

Robinson brought the assembled party, including Truganini and the other guides, to the inhospitable Swan Island. The island was exposed to powerful gales, had little food or clean water, and was infested with tiger snakes. After securing his captives on the island, Robinson received a letter of praise from the military commandant based in Launceston. While the 2200 militiamen of the Black Line had captured just two Aboriginal people at a cost of more than £30,000 (equivalent to $3,000,000 in 2025), his small party had secured 15. After gathering some more women who had been captured by sealers, Robinson took Truganini and a few of his other Aboriginal guides to Hobart, where he met with the governor in early 1831. Robinson was rewarded with land grants and hundreds of pounds for the mission's success, while Truganini and the other guides were gifted some clothing and a boat. Despite persistently asking Robinson about their boat, the Aboriginal guides never saw or used it; Robinson instead rented it out and kept the proceeds in an account he controlled.

Further expeditions

While the colony's governing Executive Council encouraged Robinson to immediately set out on another mission to round up the remaining Aboriginal population, Robinson persuaded the governor and the Aboriginal Committee (which had been established to manage the Aboriginal population) that a permanent resettlement site should first be established for the surviving Aboriginal Tasmanians on Gun Carriage Island. By 1831, the total number of Aboriginal Tasmanians had been reduced to a few hundred survivors. On 1 March, Robinson gathered Truganini, the other guides, and 17 Aboriginal people who he had gathered from the city's jail, hospital, and from settlers' homes. He took them from Hobart to Swan Island, where he collected the 51 people who had been left on the island after his last expedition. From there they continued towards the new resettlement colony. Despite complaints from Truganini and the other guides that they did not want to be resettled to Gun Carriage Island, Robinson expelled the sealers who had established a village there and turned the island into a resettlement station, giving Truganini and Woureddy one of the sealers' cottages. Truganini refused to enter her cottage and begged Robinson to let her return to the mainland.