Pinjarra massacre

The Pinjarra massacre, sometimes inaccurately still called the Battle of Pinjarra, occurred on 28 October 1834 in Pinjarra, Western Australia when a group of Bindjareb Noongar people were attacked by a detachment of 25 soldiers, police, and settlers led by Governor James Stirling. According to Stirling, "about 60 or 70" of the Bindjareb people were present at the camp and John Roe, who also participated, estimated about 70–80. This roughly agrees with an estimate of 70 by an unidentified eyewitness.

Of the attackers, Captain Theophilus Tighe Ellis died and Corporal Patrick Heffron was injured. Of the attacked, an uncertain number of Bindjareb men, women, and children were killed. Stirling quantified the number of Bindjareb people killed as probably 15 males; Roe estimated the number killed as between 15 and 20. An unidentified settler eyewitness counted about 25–30 dead, including a woman and several children, but also suggested it was "very probable that more men were killed in the river and floated down with the stream". The number of Bindjareb people injured remains uncertain, as do the number of deaths resulting from injuries sustained during the attack. However, both Bindjareb oral histories and the eyewitness put the number of dead and injured higher than Stirling and Roe did.

The Pinjarra massacre was the culmination of increasing tension and violence between newly arrived settlers, who were appropriating the land for farming, and the Noongar peoples, who lived on it as hunter-gatherers. After the attack, Governor Stirling was "effectively threatening to kill 80% of the Noongar population of the South West". Stirling claimed as justification for the attack that the Bindjareb had threatened to "destroy all the whites in their district". Some Bindjareb did continue to fight back, while others sought peace.

The effects of the massacre's outcome were devastating for the Bindjareb, allowing "surrounding groups to exploit the weakness of the once powerful Bindjareb". Despite this, some of the younger generation of Bindjareb (notably Calyute's son Monang and another individual called Denmar) later became involved with the newcomers. Indeed, Monang, some of his counterparts, and those who came after, were to contribute in a variety of ways to the development of the area into what it is today. Monang and Denmar, both involved in the murder of Nesbit, and originally on the list of "wanted" Noongar men, in fact became the first Aboriginal policemen at Pinjarra in 1838. Monang also developed a close association with Henry Bunbury and would accompany Bunbury on his expeditions. Presently, the Bindjareb Noongar people remain custodians and representatives of their culture, and still live on their ancestral lands.

There had been numerous Aboriginal attacks on settlers in the preceding years. Notably, in February 1832, Private George Budge was ambushed by Bindjareb Nyungars, and speared to death near Peel’s garden. The following July, Sergeant Wood of the 63rd Regiment was speared and nearly killed. This was followed in July 1834 by the ambush and murder of Hugh Nesbitt, a servant of Thomas Peel and the wounding of Edward Barron. Following the Binjareb looting, by means of armed robbery, of the flour mill that provided rations to settlers and Noongars in the district, as well as the murder and mutilation of Nesbitt, Captain Frederick Irwin, the lieutenant governor in Stirling's absence, is said to have inflamed the situation by adopting a soldier's attitude to crush a warlike group of Aboriginals and reduce them to a state of subjection.^{[citation needed]}

It was this unyielding, overbearing attitude that had alienated [Irwin] from the body of Swan River settlers and caused them to burn him in effigy on the eve of his departure. It was a narrow, regimented view of frontier problems and, perhaps, part of the blame for the Pinjarra massacre can be attributed to Irwin and his unsympathetic administration of Aboriginal affairs during James Stirling's absence.

Stirling had been visiting the 400-kilometre-distant (250 mi) seaport of Albany and bad weather caused his return to be delayed until September.^{[citation needed]} In response to calls from Pinjarra settlers for protection against the increased hostility of local Binjareb Noongars led by Calyute, Stirling organised a mounted force of police, bushmen and ex-soldiers. Their brief was to protect settlers, safeguard Aboriginal mail-carriers and confront the Binjareb on the Murray River. A small garrison at Dandalup had also been withdrawn from fear of Aboriginal reprisals.

The Binjareb tribe had a reputation with other local Aboriginal tribes for their aggression and attacks on other Aboriginal people and settlers.^{[citation needed]} It is possible that their motives for attacking the local settlers were part of an attempt to assert their power amongst other local tribes and to take advantage of the political upheaval caused by the arrival of the British settlers, and the death of many Perth Wadjuk people. Stirling and others, drawing on the experience of Scottish clans and native American Indians of North America, were afraid of a possible alliance between the Binjareb and Weeip's Wadjuk people in the Upper Swan, and sought to prevent such an alliance by an attack on the Aboriginal people to the south. Stirling's attack at Pinjarra was specifically to collectively punish the Binjareb for their earlier individual attacks, to re-establish a barracks on the road to the south, and to enable Peel to attract settlers into his lands at Mandurah. This followed an earlier failure by Surveyor General Septimus Roe and pastoralist Thomas Peel, who had led an expedition to the area with the goal of improving security and negotiating peaceful co-existence. Stirling wanted a "decisive action" that would end the attacks "once and for all".^{[citation needed]}