Historian Jonathan Richards

Tuesday 11 March 2008 10:05AM (view full episode)

Jonathan Richards' new book The Secret War: A True History of Queensland's Native Police is the result of ten years research into the world of this group of armed men who operated on the state's frontier in the 19th century. More paramilitary organisation than police force, the native police was made up of mounted Aboriginal troopers under the command of white officers, who usually had a background in the British Army. Their role was to 'disperse' troublesome groups of Aborigines. Jonathan Richards tells Peter Mares what he discovered about the real meaning of 'dispersal'.


Peter Mares: Without an armed force the frontier settlements could not be maintained. That was the conclusion reached in 1875 by commissioners considering the future of Queensland's native police. It's a statement that neatly sums up the role of the force, to protect settler society as it expanded north and west in Queensland in the second half of the 19th century. The native police were mounted Aboriginal troopers under the command of white officers, and their role in colonial Queensland is the subject of a new study, The Secret War: A True History of Queensland's Native Police by historian Jonathan Richards who joins me on The Book Show. Jonathan Richards, good morning.

Jonathan Richards: Morning Peter.

Peter Mares: Were they called the native police because the troopers were Aborigines or was that a description of their role, that is; they policed the natives?

Jonathan Richards: Because it was Aboriginal troopers.

Peter Mares: But their role really was to maintain 'order' between settlers and the Aboriginal people of Queensland.

Jonathan Richards: If you think about them as suppressing any sign of resistance, that's probably more accurate.

Peter Mares: And how were these troopers recruited?

Jonathan Richards: Initially with the promise of a gun, a horse, a uniform, but later at gunpoint.

Peter Mares: So there was some coercion involved.

Jonathan Richards: Sometimes it was, 'If you don't join us, we will kill you.'

Peter Mares: The nature of the force meant that there was a very high rate of desertion, as you indicate in the book.

Jonathan Richards: Sometimes the deserting was actually happening faster than the recruiting, so there was a continual shortage of troopers, especially once Aboriginal men realised what they were actually expected to do.

Peter Mares: And we should point out that the troopers weren't recruited from the same areas in which they policed.

Jonathan Richards: Not initially. Initially the first troopers in the native police came from Victoria, NSW, particularly the upper Murray River, those places. Later on they were recruited from southern Queensland and central Queensland, and that was a problem because they then started to be expected to police their own relatives and that actually accelerated the desertion rate. Later on, once they reached north Queensland, they were recruited locally.

Peter Mares: Queensland wasn't unique in this. Native police or military forces were common throughout the colonial world.

Jonathan Richards: There were native police or some variation of them in every colony in Australia.

Peter Mares: But not just in Australia though.

Jonathan Richards: No, every part of empire and every empire has used indigenous troops. It's probably one of the key factors that explains the rapid expansion of Europe in the 18th and 19th century, particularly places like Africa and Australia.

Peter Mares: And you describe them as being more a paramilitary force or a kind of special forces...you know, the term 'native police' is in itself a bit misleading.

Jonathan Richards: Yes, it is totally. They were called police but they were actually soldiers, there was no question about that, they were a military unit. So we have to use our common...the language of today to understand them, but they were soldiers.

Peter Mares: And their commanding officers were often former soldiers themselves from the British army.

Jonathan Richards: A substantial number, but more importantly the commissioner of police in Queensland for the first 30-odd years was an ex-soldier, so he ran it very much as a military unit.

Peter Mares: A key word used to describe the actions of the native police, and this was the word used at the time and in many of the documents that you refer to, that word was 'dispersal'. It sounds pretty innocuous but what did 'dispersal' actually mean?

Jonathan Richards: 'Dispersal' means 'to kill'. It's a polite way of saying that they shot these people dead. It's actually a term that they brought from England. It's to do with the way government controls disorder in England from 1700s onwards. They call on people to disperse, otherwise the soldiers will open fire on them. In this case they just opened fire first.

Peter Mares: So the native police have a reputation for brutality in their actions. Your research suggests this reputation is justified?

Jonathan Richards: Well and truly. 'Extreme violence' would be the only way to describe them.

Peter Mares: But one widespread view of the native police stemming from journalism and popular history from the late 19th and early 20th century was that this reputation for violence was because they were Aboriginal troopers. In other words, it was the innate savagery, to use the terms of the day, of the troopers themselves that was the cause or the root source of their violence.

Jonathan Richards: It's hard to know if this is an English thing or a European thing. We seem to always need to have an enemy and we always seem to have somebody else to do our dirty work for us, and in this case it was just so convenient to blame the violence on the troopers. But that's ignoring the fact that they were always under the control of European officers.

Peter Mares: I suppose someone might say, yes, but was that effective control? Were the European officers able to control these troops? You said yourself there were high rates of desertions and so on, so the argument would be, yes, there might have been a nominal white commander but were they really controlling these troops? Was the violence organised by the state, as it were?

Jonathan Richards: Considering the number of troopers who were shot dead by their own officers, it would suggest that most of the troopers were fairly frightened of the officers as well. So there's no question about that, that it was a European operation, it was just convenient to use Aboriginal people as troopers, much as in other parts of the world; they would have used Africans, Indians or another indigenous race.

Peter Mares: And why was it convenient? Why did they want native troopers?

Jonathan Richards: It's cheap. You don't have to pay them very much. They will do things that Europeans cannot or will not do.

Peter Mares: What sort of things?

Jonathan Richards: They will live in country without food, they could find their own food. They could live without shelter. They could operate without a lot of the things that Europeans demanded.

Peter Mares: And I guess they had skills in the bush which Europeans lacked as well.

Jonathan Richards: They have skills in terms of tracking, but there's been a lot of talk about...the skills that Aboriginal people have are very specific to the area that they come from. So they're very much at home in their own environment. You take them to another place, it's a whole different situation. So they are actually protecting themselves by attacking Aboriginal people in those circumstances.

Peter Mares: So that side of it, the sort of native bush skills et cetera, is exaggerated, do you think?

Jonathan Richards: It's useful, it's the rationale for using indigenous troops, it's because they are more adaptable, they're cheaper, they actually have fewer health problems, so they do work a lot better.

Peter Mares: Jonathan Richards, how difficult was it to find archival sources about the native police?

Jonathan Richards: Actually as it turned out not so difficult of all. It was simply a case of going to the archives and systematically and thoroughly going through lots and lots of records.

Peter Mares: What kinds of records?

Jonathan Richards: Colonial secretary, executive council, police commissioners, governors, dispatch...in fact I don't think I have found a government department's records that do not have references to the native police.

Peter Mares: So you went through all kinds of departments to find where they interacted with the native police?

Jonathan Richards: Everything that I suspected might have a reference I have had a look at, and to be frank I'm still finding them, there's still more out there.

Peter Mares: One of the sources of your work is actually the personnel records of the European officers of the native police, some of whom had careers spanning several decades. One man who looms large in the history is a man called Frederick Wheeler. Can you tell us a little bit about Frederick Wheeler?

Jonathan Richards: Frederick Wheeler was a very curious character. His father was a London banker, his mother was a Sicilian noblewoman, so he's a fairly hot-blooded character in the first place. We don't know why he came to Australia. He was the oldest son. He would have actually inherited quite a large fortune if he had remained at home in England. He became one of the most notorious native police officers, for several reasons. He was not shy in reporting his violence. He was not shy in reporting his attitude to Aboriginal people, and the most important part was he was a prolific report and letter writer, so there's a lot of detail on him in the archives.

Peter Mares: He left a trail. And he told a parliamentary enquiry into the native police that his orders were...well, he said he didn't have any written orders, which wasn't true, but he said as far as he understood his orders the fundamental thing was to disperse all assemblages of blacks and he didn't think 'that blacks understood anything else except shooting at them'. 'Disperse', he said, meant shooting at them.

Jonathan Richards: Yes, that's right. He was probably the most dangerous witness to ever appear in front of a government enquiry because he basically was telling people the truth.

Peter Mares: You document 29 cases where officers were dismissed, allowed to resign or chastised for their involvement in unlawful killings. That's a lot of officers to get in trouble for unlawful killing. It suggests though that there was some attempt to regulate or discipline the native police.

Jonathan Richards: Yes, it could be seen in that way, but it could also be seen as a way of protecting the government, because if any of those men were ever charged there was the risk that they would give evidence in their own defence that might incriminate the government.

Peter Mares: And they weren't charged, in fact.

Jonathan Richards: Several were charged but they were never successful, the charges. There were a number of murder charges, including one against Fredrick Wheeler. He managed to abscond on bail. The others, the charges were usually dismissed.

Peter Mares: In fact Frederick Wheeler was disciplined twice for unlawful killings; once at the start of his career and then he was reemployed and, as you say, at the end of his career he was again charged with murder.

Jonathan Richards: Yes, but 'disciplined' is pretty much a bit of a strong word, he was very lightly rapped over the knuckles on each occasion. Even the final episode in 1876 when he'd absconded on bail is a curious incident on its own in that he was allowed bail on a wilful murder charge, which was very uncommon at the time.

Peter Mares: So it was convenient for him to disappear.

Jonathan Richards: There are suggestions that it was the very top level of government who wanted to make sure he never gave evidence.

Peter Mares: As we know from the history wars, the topic of frontier violence is a very contentious area of study and it can lead to vitriolic but often futile debates about exact numbers of people who died. You haven't tried to enumerate numbers exactly, have you.

Jonathan Richards: I actually have looked at that and I think it's something that we should be doing as a nation. I think we should be trying to work this out. I just think that it's misleading. It doesn't really matter if there's 100 or 10,000 people killed, the violence is still there and it's still indigenous people who are the ones who wear that violence, it's not Europeans at all.

Peter Mares: Although obviously the native police were sent in often in response to killings of settlers.

Jonathan Richards: Yes, they were, but there was never, ever an equal police response to the killing of indigenous people by settlers.

Peter Mares: You'd have whole scores of people killed in response often.

Jonathan Richards: The evidence suggests that there were probably more indigenous people killed by settlers than anything else. Nothing was ever done about that. There were very few investigations, and the charges really did never, ever take place.

Peter Mares: But you are cautious about the sources of numbers, aren't you, about the historical record where claims of killings have taken place.

Jonathan Richards: It's a curious thing. We have here in Queensland a wonderful record set. We have some of the best record sets of colonial times anywhere in the world. There are also large gaps in the records which we don't know why that's happened, whether they were lost in early days or more recently. But more importantly, Peter, the records are one-sided, they're written by Europeans, they're written by people who want to defend their own position in the police force and in society. So they're not going to admit a predisposition towards violence.

Peter Mares: And that's often reinforced by subsequent writing, popular histories and journalism, sometimes written by the children of the officers of the native police, justifying or in a sense kind of celebrating their parent's role.

Jonathan Richards: Yes, totally unreliable, I might add. As I've put it out in the book, there are a number of key informants who should not be trusted at all.

Peter Mares: Your book is called The Secret War, but in fact this war, as you call it, wasn't all that secret. One of the fascinating aspects of your history is that it presents us with newspaper records of the debates of the time, and there was intense public criticism of the native police.

Jonathan Richards: The 'secret war' is a reference to the fact that contemporary Australia today in 2028 does not acknowledge the violence that created Australia. There is a denial of violence in this country, there is a denial of violence in settler colonies. So the 'secret war' was never declared, but as far as indigenous people are concerned it's still going on.

Peter Mares: And also people knew about it at the time, that's my point, about the newspaper debates that you record...this was much more openly debated in the 19th century.

Jonathan Richards: Yes, it certainly was. There were certainly plenty of people who were standing up and saying this is wrong, this is against the rule of law, this is hypocritical, we can't demand indigenous people to obey our rules when we won't even acknowledge them ourselves. So the whole concept of stealing is just two-sided.

Peter Mares: There's another quote in your book which I found telling and it's from a journalist called Archibald Meston, and he wrote this in 1870, it's quite a long quote but I'll just read it out:

'The pioneer settlers know nothing of the blacks' tribal laws and boundaries and cared less. If a sheep or a bullock was killed, the valuable animal had to be avenged in the blood of the nearest blacks. War, once begun, continued and spread with white settlement. Squatters at last were forced to shoot the blacks or abandon their runs and all they possessed.' And this is the key sentence here: 'It was impossible that the two races could exist and flourish together.'

In other words, war, as you've described it, was an inevitable part of colonial conquest. Do you agree with that assessment, that it was inevitable?

Jonathan Richards: No, I don't at all because in other colonies, other situations there was negotiation with indigenous people, so it's not something that was guaranteed. Archibald Meston is a very curious witness to this whole period. I began my work assuming that he was an important character in the history of the native police. As it turns out, he's not. Archibald was the most prolific writer on colonial Queensland ever, but most of what he was writing was actually very much self-promoting, and in fact he attracted huge amounts of criticism from both other people who didn't like the native police and the people who did like them, basically saying that Archibald Meston got it wrong.

Peter Mares: So he did serve with the native police, but just for a short time?

Jonathan Richards: No, he was never in the native police. He was a journalist, politician, businessman, speculator, jack-of-all-trades.

Peter Mares: But the point you're making is that he got it wrong and it would have been possible to handle relations in colonial Queensland differently.

Jonathan Richards: Yes, of course. It really goes back to Captain Cook, if you like. If the English, when they first claimed Australia, had determined to negotiate with indigenous people we would have had a very different history and a very different outcome and I probably would have never had to write this book. But for whatever reason Cook, and everyone who followed him, chose not to negotiate with indigenous people.

Peter Mares: You spent ten years researching the colonial record of the native police and, as you say, although there is a wealth of material, there are also many gaps. Is there much more to be revealed in the archives? Will we get a more complete history than this?

Jonathan Richards: Probably not on the native police, but I think we could do a lot better in the whole frontier violence...I think that in some countries there would have been an acknowledgement of this violence, we would have had a truth and reconciliation commission established a long time ago to actually say, well, who killed who? What can we find out?

Peter Mares: Dr Jonathan Richards, thank you for joining me on The Book Show.

Jonathan Richards: Thank you, Peter, it's an honour.

Peter Mares: Dr Jonathan Richards is a research fellow with the Centre for Public Culture and Ideas at Griffith University in Queensland, and he's the author of The Secret War: A true History of Queensland's Native Police which is published by the University of Queensland Press.


The Secret War: A True History of Queensland's Native Police
Jonathan Richards
University of Queensland Press
ISBN-13 9780 7022 3639 6


Peter Mares