All this and more, within a month of landing. Bowes Smyth’s agitated cluckings give us some sense of the challenges Phillip faced in bringing each level of this unruly new society to hear and to heed his words. Phillip’s own correspondence is notably smoother, largely having to do with the anxious business of housekeeping and the balancing of eroding provisions against reducing rations.
Phillip was also the patriarch of an expanding community: managing his officers, sustaining the morale of the soldiery in a hardship post, struggling to restore the health of diseased and ailing convicts and then to get useful work out of them, and then, when he was able, finding new land, establishing new settlements. Given the urgency and the consequence of all these concerns, the energy Phillip expended on his relationship with the Australians is to my mind remarkable. I have come to think him close to visionary in his obstinate dream of integrating these newly discovered people into the British polity.
Phillip had arrived burdened with an armful of instructions on how to handle natives. As early as 1768, when Cook’s Endeavour was about to embark on its voyage, the Earl of Morton, President of the Royal Society, presented Cook with a list of ‘hints’ for dealings with native peoples met along the way. The hints have the whiff of the candle about them; of pleasurable hours spent in desk-bound explorations. Beautifully clear principles were enunciated. The shedding of native blood was prohibited as ‘a crime of the highest nature’, these people being equal in the eyes of their Maker to ‘the most Polished European’. Nor could they be deprived of their land without consent. Moreover, they could justly resist invaders whom ‘they may apprehend are come to disturb them in the quiet possession of their country, whether the apprehension be well or ill founded’.
Morton realised that this last principle might be difficult to maintain, given that the British would have to get water and fresh food where they could. How to communicate the innocence of their intentions? So he set himself to devising a basic-needs alphabet in sign language. We watch his imagination take fire as he wrestles with this delightful problem:
Amicable signs may be made which they could not possibly mistake—Such as holding up a jug, turning it bottom upwards, to shew them it was empty, then applying it to the lips in the attitude of drinking, [or] opening the mouth wide, putting the fingers towards it, and then making the motion of chewing, would sufficiently demonstrate a want of food.
A question arises. Will the chewing always be understood to mean, ‘We want to eat?’ Might it not, under certain circumstances and in certain company, mean, ‘We want to eat you’? But Morton does not falter, and proceeds smoothly to the next phase. Music, but only music of a soothing kind, should be employed. The natives should not be alarmed ‘with the report of Guns, Drums, or even a trumpet’, but rather ‘be entertained near the Shore with a soft Air’. Thus, with savage breasts calmed, a landing could be effected and a few trinkets (‘particularly looking Glasses’) laid upon the shore. The newcomers would then tactfully withdraw to a small distance to observe the locals’ response before a second landing was attempted. Furthermore, ‘Should they in a hostile manner oppose a landing, and kill some men in the attempt, even this would hardly justify firing among them.’
Then, at last, comes the crucial qualifier: ‘till every other gentle method had been tried’. In the last resort, the landing must be effected whether the natives resisted or not. Why? Because the expeditions’ aims were scientific, and therefore virtuous. The British could land, even in the face of resistance. They could trade. All they could not do was to occupy the land without consent.
There is something disarming about these solemn lessons in mannerly imperialism, but as we would expect the ‘hints’ proved somewhat wanting as guides to action. Cook’s first landing in New Zealand ended with his men withdrawing to their ship leaving their gifts of nails and beads on the corpse of a chief pierced through the heart by a musket shot. Cook already knew something the noble deskman did not: a lot of ‘savages’ enjoyed fighting. His New Zealand experiences were only some among many initially peaceable encounters which had swirled into violence: as he coolly observed of the chief-killing episode, ‘Had I thought that they would have made the least resistance I would not have come near them, but as they did not I was not to stand still and suffer either my self or those who were with me to be knocked on the head.’ For once, Joseph Banks agreed with him. He thought the Maori were shockingly eager to fight, almost making a game of it: ‘They always attacked, though seldom seeming to mean more than to provoke us to show them what we were able to do in this case. By many trials we found that good usage and fair words would not avail the least with them, nor would they be convinced by the noise of our firearms alone that they were superior to theirs.’ The only thing to do was to fire to wound, because ‘as soon as they had felt the smart of even a load of small shot and had time allowed them to recollect themselves from the effects of their artificial courage...they were sensible of our generosity in not taking the advantage of our superiority’. For Banks gunfire, not music, was the way to the savage heart.
Official instructions, however utopian, have a longer life than the stories drawn from hard experience. Governor Phillip brought a determination verging on obstinacy to the business of persuading the local population to friendship; a determination rare, possibly unique, in the gruff annals of imperialism. He pursued Morton’s strategies from refusing to use guns, even at the cost of taking casualties, down to the detail of the ribbons and looking-glasses. (It is true that he also resorted to kidnap to convey his benevolent intentions, but that rough way to useful intercourse predates Columbus.) In a letter probably written in the July of that first hectic year of 1788 he gave the following detailed observations on the local inhabitants. (The capitals might imply pomposity to us, but not to a contemporary):
The Natives are far more numerous than expected, I reckon from fourteen to sixteen hundred in this Harbour, Broken Bay, and Botany Bay, and once [we fell in with] Two hundred and twelve Men in one part...The Women are constantly employed in the Canoes where I have seen them big with Child, and with very young Infants at their Breasts, they seem less fond of ornaments than the men. And I have [never?] seen them with their hair Ornamented with the Teeth of Dogs [...] etc. as the Hair of the Men is frequently Ornamented.
I have reason to think that the Men do not want personal Courage [,] they readily place a confidence and appear to be a friendly and inoffensive people unless made Angry and which the most trifling circumstance does at times. Three convicts have been killed by them in the Woods and I have no doubt but that the Convicts were the [aggressors?].
They...are fond of any very Soft Musick, and will attend to singing any of the Words which they very readily repeat. But I know very little at present of the people. They never come into the Camp, and I have had few hours to seek them out. There are