The title of this post is also the 'white' name for the Aboriginal rebel/outlaw (S)Jandamarra (who was the subject of a docudrama on Australia's ABC TV a couple of years ago), and the title of a book I've just read on the same historical figure.
This publication comes from Hesperian Press: an eccentric, quirky, one-man publisher in Western Australia dedicated in the main to reprinting classic, non-fiction Australiana, and espousing a decidedly right-wing, conspiratorial, anti-academic worldview. Still, Hesperian offers many rare titles otherwise unavailable, including such gems as 'Darkest West Australia', from which came the practical bushman's advice I've previously posted on TMP.
'Pigeon' is one title in the 'Sand and Stone' series by retired policeman Kevin Moran. In complete contrast to the main source used by the producers of the aforementioned TV production, which was based largely on Aboriginal oral traditions, this book draws heavily on the records of the Western Australian Police Force – and that, I think, is its main strength and value. Many police reports from the officers 'on the ground', and exchanges between them and their superiors, are included. Unfortunately the book is badly written: marred by clumsy, ungrammatical, mangled English, riddled with malapropisms, and poorly structured; the fact that the author left school at the age of thirteen is only too apparent. A much easier, if less comprehensive, read is Ion Idriess' factional narrative 'Outlaws of the Leopolds'. I suggest that anyone interested in the subject read both in conjunction.
Moran's thesis is that Pigeon was an outlaw from both white and black society, and was never the heroic pan-Aboriginal resistance fighter that some would make him – even within his own Bunuba tribal culture – and the content of his book certainly supports that contention. He specifically lumps Pigeon in the same basket with Australian bushrangers and American desperados of the Wild West.
Important points that emerge from the text and that mostly reinforce what I already knew are:
. Aboriginal resistance was never unified. In fact, most of the police pursuit parties contained more armed Aborigines (Police Assistants and station workers) than white men; usually non-Bunuba, and therefore naturally hostile to Jandamarra and his followers .
. tribesmen armed mostly with traditional weapons had very little chance of defeating their colonial opponents by this time (the 1890s), given that the latter were usually mounted while the Bunuba were on foot, and most of the police and settlers had Winchesters. Although settlers were killed during Pigeon's 'campaign', I could find no mention of anyone on the colonial side dying in action; the settler fatalities were exclusively the result of murders. A few police and settlers were wounded during skirmishes, however.
. Aboriginal warriors could display great courage. Despite being hopelessly outgunned, the police reports often describe the Bunuba as fighting 'stubbornly' – and incurring commensurate numbers of casualties.
.Moran draws a distinction between tribesmen who killed minimal stock for food, and 'criminals' who destroyed far larger numbers out of 'blood lust'. He claims that the former were tolerated and only the latter were pursued by police. Most academic writers on frontier conflict attribute mass stock killings to economic warfare, and claim that even the most trifling of stock thefts usually attracted violent retribution from settlers and police.
. the impression is given that colonial responses to Aboriginal attacks on stock and settlers in this part of the country at this point in history were dealt with as lawfully as possible, in contrast with the less restrained behaviour prevailing earlier in the colonial era, and contemporarily in other parts of Australia. I think this is probably a valid point; the attitude of the British colonial authorities towards indigenous populations generally was starting to become more enlightened by this period.
