Richmond River Massacre
The Richmond River Massacre , also known as the Evan Head Massacre , took place in what is now Bundjalung National Park near Coraki in northwest New South Wales in Australia . The 1842 event resulted in the deaths of more than 100 Bundjalung Aborigines ; it is dated differently, and there are sources suggesting that the event took place in 1846 or 1847.
The border between the Aboriginal and white settlers was north of the Richmond River in the early 1840s . There are two different versions of the massacre: Around 1842 a leader of a group of Aborigines blocked the sawmills' way through the rainforest. Although there was a peaceful coexistence between blacks and whites, Steve King shot the Aborigine and the seeds of violence were sown.
The whites report five murders of whites at Pelican Creek in 1842, in a wooden depot, as the occasion for retaliation against the Aborigines, which resulted in a massacre in which more than 100 Aborigines were killed. The Aborigines traditionally camped at Bundjalung National Park on the banks of the Evan River and the armed whites came with a schooner and fired weapons at the Aborigines in the camp from a safe distance. Men, women and children were killed. In the following years other Aborigines were killed by whites and as a result the Aboriginal tribe died out.
literature
- Ruby Langford Ginibi : My Bundjalung People . A book of hope and courage, adventure, told by a true survivor. University of Queensland Press, 1994, ISBN 0-7022-2637-8 ( [1] ).