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Massacre of the Aborigines  Van Diemen's Land, as Tasmania was
then known, was first settled by the British as a penal colony
in 1803. Convicts who were deemed difficult were sent here for
punishment, and it quickly became infamous as a bitter land of
sadism, terror, and violence.  The arrival of the British was a
disaster for the four or five thousand Aboriginal inhabitants of
the island. The British actively engaged in genocide, which
succeeded by 1876, when Truganini, the last pure-blooded
Tasmanian woman, died.  Truganini witnessed the total
destruction of her people during her lifetime. She was born
around 1812, and her life was a long series of horrors. Her
mother was stabbed to death by sealers, her sister abducted and
killed by sailors, and her fiancé was murdered while trying to
save Truganini from being kidnapped and raped.  She lived
through a period when Aborigines were shot on sight, tortured,
and forced into slavery. A final solution