Canine revolution: The social and environmental impact of the introduction of the dog to Tasmania

Environmental History

Volumn 11, Issue 1, 2006, Pages 102-129

  Boyce, James ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF TASMANIA   (Australia)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT; HUNTING; INDIGENOUS POPULATION; SOCIAL IMPACT;

CANIS FAMILIARIS;

EID: 33645823927     PISSN: 10845453     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/envhis/11.1.102     Document Type: Article

References (108)

1. Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fate of Human Societies (London: Jonathan Cape, 1997), 313.
2. Jared Diamond, "Evolution, Consequences and Future of Plant and Animal Domestication," Nature 418 (2002): 200.
3. The term "fire-stick" farming was coined by the archaeologist Rhys Jones to describe the sophisticated burning regimes of Aboriginal people that ensured favorable habitat for game.
4. Alfred Crosby, Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe 900-1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 7.
5. For example, Eric Rolls argued that "the Nineteenth Century Britons who settled... were not only unwilling to change any of their ways, they self righteously tried to change both Aborigines and country into Britons in Britain": Eric Rolls, Running Wild (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1973), 23;
6. and Elim Papadakis noted that early settlers found the land "strange, alien and intractable," and that "the prevailing attitude among the white settlers was that of conquest, of dominating the natural environment": Elim Papadakis, Politics and the Environment: The Australian Experience (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1993), 45, 49.
7. Thomas R. Dunlap, Nature and the English Diaspora: Environment and History in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 19.
8. William Lines, Taming the Great South Land: A History of the Conquest of Nature in Australia (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1991), 48.
9. Tim Flannery, The Eternal Frontier: An Ecological History of North America and Its Peoples (Melbourne: Text Publishing, 2001), 291.
10. D. N Jeans, ed., Space and Society (Sydney: Sydney University Press, 1987), 6-7.
11. Lines, Taming the Great South Land, 26.
12. See, for example, Tim Bonyhady, The Colonial Earth (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2000).
13. Karl Jacoby, Crimes against Nature: Squatters, Poachers, Thieves and the Hidden History of American Conservation (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2001), 3.
14. Frank Crowley, A New History of Australia (Melbourne: William Heinemann, 1974), 10.
15. Alec Chisholm, Land of Wonder: The Best of Australian Nature Writing (Angus and Robertson).
16. David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, 1788-1801 (London: Whitcombe and Tombs, 1910), 77, 169.
17. Gun inaccuracy was such that up to the mid-nineteenth century, "firing at ranges much over one hundred yards was usually a waste of shot and powder. Even at this range the musket was unreliable": A. M. Low, cited by Glen McLaren, Beyond Leichardt:Bushcraft and the Exploration of Australia (Fremantle: Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1996), 46.
18. David Burn, A Picture of Van Diemen's Land (facsimile, Hobart: Cat and Fiddle Press, 1973), 134.
19. Stonehenge wrote in 1867 that this animal "claimed his descent from the most ancient race in Britain," but reported that they were then little used. W. Beilby, The Dog in Australasia (Melbourne: George Robertson, 1897), 125.
20. Louisa Meredith, My Home in Tasmania (New York: Bunce and Britain, 1883), 171-72.
21. Bonyhady, The Colonial Earth, 133.
22. Marjorie Tipping, Convicts Unbound: The Story of the Calcutta Convicts and Their Settlement in Australia (Melbourne: Viking O'Neill, 1988), 172.
23. David Collins to Sullivan August 3, 1804, Historical Records of Australia: Series 3, Volume 1, (Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1921), 264.
24. Margaret Glover, History of the Site of Bowen's Settlement Risdon Cove (Hobart: National Parks and Wildlife Service, 1978), 10.
25. Phillip Tardif, John Bowen's Hobart: The Beginning of European Settlement in Tasmania (Hobart: Tasmanian Historical Research Association, 2003), 65.
26. Van Diemen's Land: Copies of All Correspondence between Lieutenant Governor Arthur and His Majesty's Secretary of State for the Colonies on the Subject of the Military Operations Lately Carried on against the Aboriginal Inhabitants of Van Diemen's Land (Including Minutes of Evidence Taken before the Committee for the Affairs of the Aborigines, 1830), (Hobart: Tasmanian Historical Research Association, 1971), 259.
27. Barbara Hamilton-Arnold, ed., Letters and Papers of G. P. Harris, 1803-1812: Deputy Surveyor-General of New South Wales at Sullivan Bay, Port Phillip, and Hobart Town, Van Dieman's Land (Victoria: Arden Press, 1994), 61.
28. Mary Nicholls, ed., The Diary of the Reverend Robert Knopwood, 1803-1838: First Chaplain of Van Diemen's Land ([Hobart]: Tasmanian Historical Research Association, 1977), entry for February 28, 1804.
29. Sydney Gazette, March 18, 1804.
30. Benjamin Bensley, Lost and Found or Light in the Prison: A Narrative with Original Letters of a Convict Condemned for Forgery (London: W. Wells Gardner, 1859), 143-44.
31. Bonyhady, The Colonial Earth, 34.
32. Hamilton-Arnold, ed., Letters and Papers of G. P. Harris, 64-65.
33. It seems that Aborigines stopped eating scale-fish about four thousand years ago, concentrating on the readily available crayfish and shellfish, including scallops, oysters, and abalone. Until hunting was restricted by land alienation, ordinary British people also largely abandoned scale fishing, as with such readily available alternatives, it was not worth the effort. Perhaps the "mystery" of the Aborigines change of diet is as easily explained.
34. Benjamin Bensley, Lost and Found or Light in the Prison: A Narrative with Original Letters of a Convict Condemned for Forgery (London: W. Wells Gardner, 1859), 145, 152.
35. Tipping, Convicts Unbound, 112.
36. HRA 3/1, 526.
37. Mitchell Library, A1341, GGO, December 27, 1804.
38. Tipping, Convicts Unbound, 112.
39. William Paterson to King January 8, 1805. HRA 3/1, 629.
40. William Paterson to Castlereagh August 12, 1806, HRA 3/1, 661.
41. William Paterson to King March 10, 1806, HRA, 3/1, 658-59.
42. William Paterson to King, 14 November 1805, HRA 3/1, 645.
43. King to William Paterson 20/11/05, HRA 3/1. 648 This "solution" was another reflection of the spirit of the English game laws.
44. Robert Knopwood, for example, did his own hunting of kangaroo initially but this seems to have stopped by July 1804. After this he concentrated on shooting birds and fishing occasionally-both activities of which could take place near or within the settlement.
45. Hamilton-Arnold, ed., Letters and Papers of G. P. Harris, 1803-1812, 72-73.
46. Tipping, Convicts Unbound, 112.
47. HRA 3/3, 252.
48. Mitchell Library, AK 341, GGO, December 31, 1803;
49. Glover, History of the Site of Bowen's Settlement Risdon Cove, 20.
50. William Paterson to Windham, 29 18 08, HRA 3/1 672-3.
51. By the end of June 1806 465 people out of the 475 in the colony were on the ration. Archives Office of Tasmania CO 201/43.
52. William Paterson to Sullivan, April 21, 1807, HRA 3/1 668.
53. On December 17, 1806, the Norfolk Island settler William Williams claimed the ten pounds reward for the return of Knopwood's stolen dog. This was significant money, a year's income for some poor English laborers and about a fortnight's wages even for the chaplain. Many had been transported for stealing less. The value of dogs also was shown by the fact that eight "greyhound" pups, still nursing, were sold for eighty pounds in 1805. On January 18, 1807, Knopwood paid twenty-five pounds for a dog, although as more were bred, the price inevitably dropped. A replacement dog purchased in October 1807 cost the chaplain "only" eight pounds.
54. Mitchell Library, GGO, September 15, 1807.
55. In the context of a concerted public campaign in Australia (as a central tenet of the so-called "history wars") to downplay the level of conflict between whites and Aborigines in Van Diemen's Land, it is important to note that it is likely that more than the four Aborigines recorded by Knopwood were killed by the British in 1807. Keith Windschuttle's Fabrication of Aboriginal History: Volume One, Van Diemen's Land, (which has received unparalleled levels of media exposure) is contemptuous of the conclusion that a significantly higher number of Aborigines were killed than is definitively documented. The conflict during 1807 is highlighted as an example of the politically motivated "fabrication" supposedly purported by historians: Keith Windschuttle, The Fabrication of Aboriginal History: Volume One Van Diemen's Land 1803-1847 (Sydney: Macleay Press, 2002), 48-50.
56. However, when considered in context, this period illustrates as well as any the dangers of Windschuttle's reductionist methodology. The only available account of the specific deaths that occurred during 1807, including the killing of an Aborigine by the lieutenant governor's own gamekeeper, is in Knopwood's private journal. In turn, with one possible exception, Knopwood recorded only killings done by, or in the presence of, his own servant. To assume that this represents a comprehensive record is to assume that the many gamekeepers assigned to other officers avoided the Aboriginal resistance witnessed by Knopwood's man, that at Port Dalrymple there were no violent encounters at all, and that contemporary observers who documented, in general terms, high levels of conflict with kangaroo hunters, were mistaken. These episodes vividly illustrate the enormous gaps in the government record, in which Windschuttle shows such confidence. The quiet acceptance of convicts sometimes killing Aborigines (required to protect the interests of their masters) - rigorously denied by Windschuttle, also is confirmed in the incidents discussed here. Knopwood was both a magistrate and priest, but showed no inclination to investigate or even report the death of two British subjects at the hands of his own servant. (No white was to ever be prosecuted for the death of an Aborigine in Van Diemen's Land, despite another of Windschuttle's fictitious claims to the contrary.) I have reviewed the limitations of Windschuttle's methodology, and his many errors of fact, in detail - see James Boyce, "Fantasy island," Whitewash: On Keith Windschuttle's Fabrication of Aboriginal History, in Robert Manne, ed., (Melbourne: Black Inc., 2003);
57. and James Boyce, "Better to Be Mistaken Than to Deceive: The Fabrication of Aboriginal History and the Van Diemonian Record," Island 96 (2004).
58. M. Fels, "Culture Contact in the Country of Buckingamshire Van Diemen's Land 1803-1811," THRA Papers and Proceedings 29 (1982), 60.
59. Edward White, for example, lived near the Great Western Tiers for three years without ever carrying a gun. Van Diemen's Land, 53.
60. No British observations of Aboriginal death by disease exist in Van Diemen's Land before the late 1820s, even though cross-cultural contact increased and a temporary hospital for Aborigines was opened in Hobart Town in 1819. While this does not mean that a significant number of Aborigines did not die from disease, given the increasing level of cross-cultural contact, and the number of reports of large groups of Aborigines containing infants and the elderly, the available evidence suggests that Van Diemen's Land was free of large-scale epidemics until at least the mid 1820s. The lack of mobility, the low population, the long sailing time (meaning most diseases had been burnt out on the voyage), and a comprehensive small-pox vaccination program seem to have moderated the overall impact of disease on Aboriginal people until the late 1820s. At any rate, there is no direct evidence to the contrary. See Boyce, "Fantasy Island," 42-44. For a discussion of this issue, including the fact that Windschuttle, who believes that no claims about the number of Aborigines who died from violence can be made beyond those definitively documented, concludes that almost all other Aborigines died from disease, without providing one piece of direct evidence of this.
61. Rhys Jones, "Tasmanian Aborigines and Dogs," Mankind 7 (December 1970): 263, 270.
62. The Hobart Town Courier of January 14, 1831 reported that the Aborigines "walked very leisurely along the road, followed by a large pack of dogs." On Aborigines deliberately restricting breeding, see Robinson's journal of November 3, 1831;
63. N. J. B. Plomley, ed., Friendly Mission: The Tasmanian Journals of George Augustus Robinson 1829-1834 (Tasmanian Historical Research Association, 1966), 501.
64. Phillip King, Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical Coasts of Australia (Adelaide: Library Board of S.A, 1969), 160. On January 25, 1819, on the west coast, King recorded a meeting with the Aborigines and noted that "our dog being a subject of much alarm was fastened to the stem of our boat."
65. Robinson reported that the five dogs he saw with a group of west coast Aborigines in March 1834 were "the best native dogs I had ever seen. They are betwixt a greyhound and a brindle terrier"; Plomley, ed., Friendly Mission, 859.
66. Ibid., 644, 836.
67. An example of the individual nature of dog ownership is provided in Robinson's journal of December 4, 1831. Robinson asked the Aboriginal leader Mannalargenna "if the two dogs he had with him when I met him were the son's dogs, and he said no, they were Karnebutchers and that Watterinten was Karnebutcher's dogs." Regarding the emotional connections with dogs heightened by dispossession and war, one of the most tragic episodes in Tasmanian Aboriginal history is the imprisonment, through Robinson's deception, of west coast Aboriginal people in the British Empire's most feared prison, Macquarie Harbour, in 1834, where many died. While a ship was waiting with the surviving Aborigines on board to sail out of Macquarie Harbour to exile, Robinson records that on September 24, 1834, "The people on board the Tamar threw one of the native dogs overboard willfully during the night. All the natives very uneasy about it. Jock the woman who owned the dog was in tears all the day in consequence of it" (pp. 538, 798).
68. The inference should not be made, however, that kangaroo dogs were a feature only of the frontier life. One account from 1817 notes "the surprising number of dogs that kept us awake for some nights after we arrived in the town with their incessant barking. At that time everyone had a kangaroo dog who could contrive to keep one, and first one dog set up a growl, then another caught up, and he was, of course answered from another part of the town, so that presently hundreds of dogs, watch-dogs, kangaroo-dogs, and mongrels of all sorts and types, all would set up such a barking and tearing that we thought to be sure something dreadful must be the matter: that the convicts had risen, or that the natives had fired the town": See W. Thornley, The Adventures of an Emigrant (Rigby, 1973), 6.
69. Van Diemonian culture is discussed in more detail in James Boyce, "Journeying Home: A New Look at the British Invasion of Van Diemen's Land 1803-1823," Island 66 (1996).
70. K. R. Von Stieglitz, Tasmanian Bushrangers (Australian Broadcasting Commission, 1951), 28. Michael Howe's power was virtually unchallenged between 1814 and 1817 beyond the immediate confines of the main settlement, eventually negotiating his armistice terms, as the self proclaimed lieutenant governor of the woods, direct with the British governor, in letters written in kangaroo blood. Only when Mary was betrayed, and joined his pursuers, did Howe's power falter.
71. Hobart Town Gazette December 25, 1819.
72. HRA 3/3, 250.
73. Government Order of June 30, 1821, listed in Edward Curr, An Account of the Colony of Van Diemen's Land: Principally Designed for the Use of Emigrants (Hobart: Platypus publications, 1967), 154.
74. Plomley, ed., Friendly Mission, 557-8.
75. James Ross, The Settler in Van Diemen's Land (facsimile, Melbourne: Marsh Walsh Publishing, 1975), 66.
76. Charles Jeffreys, Van Dieman's Land: Geographical and Descriptive Delineations of the Island of Van Dieman's Land (London: J.M. Richardson, 1820), 100-101.
77. For example, Robinson recorded on Hunter Island, that "at one time the island abounded with kangaroo, but they are now very scarce, the sealers having killed them; at one time they had sixty dogs." Wild dogs inhabited many islands, including East Hunter Island, now known as Three Hummock Island. The fauna of Bass Strait islands where no humans had lived for thousands of years, such as King Island, were particularly devastated. Plomley, ed., Friendly Mission, 176-77.
78. The last captive animals died in the 1930s, and there have been no definitive sightings since, although a number of credible reports or sightings have been made.
79. Alfred Burbury, "Alfred Burbury Memories from the Chronicles of the Burbury Family," 2 Oatlands District Historical Society Chronicle 1 (December 2000): 29.
80. Comprehensive discussions of thylacine research are contained in Eric Guiler, Thylacine: The Tragedy of the Tasmanian Tiger (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1985);
81. Robert Paddle, The Last Tasmanian Tiger: The History and Extinction of the Thylacine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000);
82. and David Owen, Thylacine: The Tragic Tale of the Tasmanian Tiger (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2003).
83. James Bischoff, Sketch of the History of Van Diemen's Land (London: J. Richardson, 1832), 224.
84. N. J. B. Plomley, Jorgen Jorgenson and the Aborigines of Van Diemen's Land: Being a Reconstruction of His "Lost" Book on Their Customs and Habits, and on His Role in the Roving Parties and the Black Line (Hobart: Blubber Head Press, 1991), 63.
85. Windschuttle, Fabrication of Aboriginal History, 88-89.
86. Windschuttle's analysis of this issue is analysed in Boyce, "Fantasy Island", 47-51.
87. The documented figure of around 187 white deaths does not account for killings of whites living unofficially in the bush beyond official observation or record, so that the likely overall death toll is in excess of two hundred. Windschuttle documents a figure of 120 Aborigines whose killings have been documented. Given that, except for a period of martial law from 1830 to 1832, these killings were illegal under British law, all historians, have always assumed many killings were not recorded. Even apart from the issue that Windschuttle did not consult any private letters or diaries in compiling his figure, for all but Windschuttle, 120 would seem, as Alan Atkinson has put it, to be a minimum rather than a maximum figure. In terms of the negotiations with Aborigines, as far as can be gauged by Robinson's journals, the unwritten understandings reached involved the temporary removal of the Aborigines to Flinders Island. The terms were not honored and the exile was for all intents and purposes permanent: By the time return was allowed in 1847, most were dead. The political negotiations between the British and the Aborigines are considered in Henry, Fate of a Free People: A Radical Re-Examination of the Tasmanian Wars (Penguin, 1995). Reynolds does not, however, consider the high number of Aborigines, mainly from the west coast, who were captured and subsequently exiled through deception and arms.
88. Windschuttle, Fabrication of Aboriginal History, 382.
89. Reynolds, Fate of a Free People, 87-119.
90. The British were surprised at the Aborigines' ability to keep their dogs quiet. Robinson noted in November 1830 in the northeast that "when I set out I had hoped to have found the natives by their dogs, but the tact these people have in quieting their dogs is truly surprising: they had 30 dogs and we never heard the least noise of them until we approached them": Plomley, Friendly Mission, 264
91. G. Dow and H. Dow, Landfall in Van Diemen's Land: The Steels Quest for Greener Pastures (Footscray: Footprint, 1990), 45.
92. A. H. Campbell, John Batman and the Aborigines (Melbourne: Kibble Books, 1987), 32. Windschuttle reduces the Aboriginal death tally from this incident to two, on the basis that these were the only people Batman saw die.
93. John Henderson, Observations on the Colonies of New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land, (facsimile, Adelaide: Libraries Board of South Australia, 1965), 76.
94. James Bonwick, The Last of the Tasmanians; or, the Black War of Van Diemen's Land (London: Sampson Low Son & Marston, 1870). 113.
95. Wild dogs were a major concern between the late 1820s and 1860s. Outside of the northwest they, rather than the thylacine, were seen as the main threat to sheep. As early as January 10, 1828, Arthur listed the spread of wild dogs as one of the major threats posed by the Aborigines, telling London of "the nuisance of their dogs, which originally [were] purloined from the settlers, have increased to such a number as to threaten to become a lasting pest to the country." Arthur instructed Robinson in October 1833, prior to setting off for his last expedition, that he was to enlist the Aborigines' help in the capture of wild dogs, which they pretended to do for some weeks in the Eastern Tiers near Campbell Town in December: Plomley, ed., Friendly Mission, 823-24.
96. For example, the Hobart Town Gazette on July 25, 1834 and September 25, 1834 gave details of "An Act to restrain the increase of dogs," which included compulsory registration, the seizure of unregistered dogs, the shooting of dogs at large, and rewards for killing or seizing unregistered dogs. The reward was to be between five and forty shillings at the discretion of the police magistrate. Registration costs were increased to ten shillings for male kangaroo dogs and twenty for females, although the dogs needed by the wealthy - watch dogs and sheep dogs - cost about a quarter of other dogs. The 1846 Dog Act caused a constitutional crisis in 1847 when the chief justice deemed it illegitimate. See Lloyd Robson, A History of Tasmania Vol.1. Van Diemens Land from the Earliest Times to 1855 (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1983), 471-72.
97. In 1851, Fenton reported that the dog tax was the main source of revenue for making or mending roads, and that it was still collected and authorized by the police magistrate (James Fenton, Bush Life in Tasmania Fifty Years Ago (1851; reprint, Launceston: Mary Fisher Bookstore, 1891), 77.
98. Meredith, My Home in Tasmania, 172-73.
99. Eustace Fitzsymonds, Mortmain: A Collection of Choice Petitions, Memorials, and Letters of Protest and Request from the Convict Colony of Van Diemen's Land (Hobart: Sullivan's Cove, 1977), 50.
100. Henry Tingley, convict, Apsley Lagoon, Great Swanport, to father Thomas Tingley, June 15, 1835 in C. M. H. Clark, Select Documents in Australian History (Angus and Robertson, 1966), 131.
101. Fenton, Bush Life in Tasmania, 35.
102. James Calder, The Log: Circumnavigation of Van Diemen's Land by Captain James Kelly and Other Accounts of Early Exploration of the West and North West Coast of Tasmania from Parliamentary Papers (Hobart: Government Printer, 1986), 50.
103. As Robinson noted on February 26, 1834, "The great difficulty I have always experienced with too many dogs is the feeding them." On July 9,1834, he drowned ten of his dog's thirteen pups. Plomley, ed., Friendly Mission, 850, 896-98.
104. Alfred Burbury's "Memories" from the mid nineteenth century provide an excellent summary of the damage caused by wild dogs and their eventual control: "Packs of wild dogs... became so bad when I was a boy that we were quite unable to put sheep on some of the runs for fear of them... Eventually distemper wiped out the wild dogs and most of the domesticated ones as well." Burbury, "Memories," 29.
105. Jordan and Kaups see a distinctive culture emerging among the back woodsmen which included mixing with Indians, dependence on nonagricultural, open-range livestock, "simple high protein diet containing unusually large amounts of meat," the importance of hunting, and an appreciation of freedom. As in Van Diemen's Land, contemporary observers seem to have been critical of housing, farms, the lack of order, and regularity, morals and the "slovenly cultivation." Comparisons with the convict-hunters of this paper are obvious: T. Jordan and M. Kaups, The American Backwoods Frontier (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1989), 3-6.
106. Sean Cadigan, "Are Common Property Rights and Open-Access Exploitation Two Sides of the Same Coin?: A Historical Perspective on Coastal Resource Management in Newfoundland," in Retrenchment and Regeneration in Rural Newfoundland, ed. Reginal Byron (Swansea: University of Wales).
107. Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory (London: Fontana Press, 1996), 574.
108. E. P Thompson, Customs in Common: Studies in Traditional Popular Culture (London: Penguin, 1993) 14-15. Thompson believed that "too many of our growth historians are guilty of a crass economic reductionism, obliterating the complexities of motive, behaviour and function, which, if they noted it in the work of Marxist analogues, would make them protest. The weakness which these explanations share is an abbreviated view of economic man" (p. 187). The same argument could be made about some environmental history.