Tench clearly believes that Benalong gets away with his behaviour because he is a "big man" which may not be the case at all.
While I would not say that aboriginal society was ever free of violence and brutality, it must be stressed that one would expect more of this if the society was under a great amount of stress. The evnets take place within an interesting chronology.
1) April 1789 smallpox "mysteriously" appears amongst the aboriginals wiping out great numbers and spreading far (the Sydney colony was in a food crisis and the vital farms protected by the fortress in Parrammatta would have been bearing vunerable shoots having being ploughed in December 1788 - not unconnected in my mind with the convenient smallpox outbreak).
2) December 1789 Benalong is "captured" (he is estimated to be about 26 years old - an important age as it marks the beginings of a transition into elder - ie around the 30's depending on personal history). He is a pox-marked survivour.
3) He has spear scars on his arm and leg - these can be attributed to battle, but are also the marks of payback punishments - notably for killings as well as religious infractions. He has other scars including around the head (common in club combat - nulla nulla's - and also a common form of punishment). He also has a thumb part removed perhaps an accident, but also can be associeted with mourning (though not usually the thumb but a finger is cut-off at the joint). The reasons for these are all explained - unfortunately Tench does not tell us what was said.
4) A scar on the back of his hand is explained - it was recieved when he stole the daughter from an enemy in another tribe by Botany Bay (the woman referred to later being beaten). It is a specific act of revenge (payback) against a kin member of his enemy - perhaps the man who killed the person memorialisied by his missing thumb joint.
5) Sometime in may 1790 Benalong escapes he is not seen again until September 1790.
6) Benalong welcomes his old captors as friends when they approach a large number of Aboriginals carving up a whale on the beach. But he shows enormous fear of the Govenor's servant McEntire (I mention this because the same man was latter killed by Pemulway as the first instance of his war against the settlement - I believe McEntire may well have spread the smallpox - his mysterious deathbed confession of crimes against the aboriginals is mentioned but not elucidated by Tench). Benalong now sports two fresh scars one from a spear in the fleshy part of his arm and a cut above the eye (both would seem to be tribal punishments) he has also lost his much beloved wife to another man but has gained two others as recompense (the nature of marriage was somewhat flexiable and really only referred to convenient living arrangements which had to be maintained by regular exchanges with in-laws).
7) At this point Govenor Phillip is wounded by a warrior from another tribe. The outcome over the next few weeks actually leads, for the first time to the local aboriginals coming into much closer contact with the colony, this is part initiated by Benalong, who persuades a young woman, Abarooo to go to the Sydney colony. Importantly Benalong stands as marriage arbitrator for this woman, and rebuffs a young warrior's attempt to have her remain (which she also did). In short, Benalong is making a treaty by "marrying-off" Abaroo to the colony - Tench seems well aware of this arrangement (it should be noted that sex need not play any significant part in this - rather she was going into the camp of the "whites" and thus oblidged them to come into an exchange relation. It should be noted that she favoured a lover who would turn up in due course (Imeerawanye a mature warrior)
8) The main incident occurs in Novemeber 1790 when Benalong was resident amongst the English and a number of aboriginals camped within its environs at Benalong's european house on the point where the Opera House now stands (ie a result of 7, where Araboo was treated as a honoured guest by the Govenor). Benalong emerges from a gathering of aboriginals and invites the Govenor to witness an execution of a woman. None other than the Botany Bay enemy's daughter he kidnapped sometime before December 1789 (point 4). She is at this point about 16 (which means that she was 14-15 when Benalong took her) and sitting amongst Benalong's people as she shy's away from his murderous entrance. He beats her badly and afterwards proclaims his right to rape and kill her. She is taken to the hospital where Benalong again tries to harm her (or at least threatens to).
9) The extra-ordinary thing, to the European mind, is that during her stay there she was visited by a young man Boladeree (19-20) who admitted to being her husband, but had sat through the whole assualt without lifting a finger to help her. Soon after Benalong became reconciled to her, peace was offered and so this complex incident came to an end.
It is not difficult to reconstruct what had happened. Benalong had punished his enemy's daughter (who probably was not a daughter but her mother's brother) by taking her, "ravashing her" and keeping her, but NOT EXCHANGING with them as in-laws - ie direct punishment to that kin group for some previous trespass. This had probably gone on peacefully enough (though she was not counted as wife - there being no in-law exchange) until she contracted an arrangement with Benalong's clan brother, Boladeree (Benalong would have stood, because of the age difference as uncle to him - an authorative figure). Suddenly Benalong's revenge was subverted and hence he went to exact tribute from her broken bones and perhaps death. Bolderee would not have thought to lift a finger against his brother-uncle's justified rage (whatever revenge fell on Benalong's shoulders also touched him), nor could he by the same token be the target of it.
At the same time the accumalation of punishment scars shows the disapproval of some of his actions and the disruption it caused (not because of what happened to the girl but the diffiuclty of Benalong not surrendering in-law exchanges to an important tribal group to the South), hence his beloved wife was reassigned, and by some other measure perhaps he was awarded two others for some like politic reason - in the end he faced a final resolution, she would no longer be his to hold, Boladeree would surrender the proper exchanges.
In this drama which is complex, it is easy to jump to the conclusion that women were being used as chattels. However, tribal politics like tribal punishments can only reside in the person, making it balance required people to fulfil their obligations (even brutal ones) - occassionally things would get out of kilter and the violence of their solving is not to modern tastes, but despite all this people played their roles consciously (like Abaroo) or indeed Benalong himself (remarked by Tench as having uncommon intelliegence) who became the front-line of contact between two entirely different societies and risked himself in strange circumstances in order to reconcile the unreconcilable (he died sadly alone and of drink many years later in that small hut now under the Opera House - his people smashed, their land occupied).
Rob forgive this lengthy post, I am not aware of any historians having tried to see any sense in these occurances, yet even in Tench there are so many strong clues which knit the thing together (there may be gross errors in my rendition above but I am sure they are closer to the truth than the normal historical accounts which pander to European prejudices about the roles of men and women, power and equality etc). The history of Kinship societies is if nothing else laced with complexities and also underlying order and reason, the image of oppressive, exploitative males reducing women to slavery in such societies is appealing to the bourgeois mind, but misses the point too much to be useful or true.
Greg Schofield Perth Australia
--- Message Received --- From: rws at comedu.canberra.edu.au To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com Date: Sat, 24 Nov 2001 19:10:32 Australia/Canberra Subject: Re: Pre-historic human societies (Grant Lee)
G'day Greg,
> As far as being elegatiarian, aboriginal society was strictly divided, but as no-one
benefited from a surplus all enjoyed the fruits of the collective labour - by definition
this is egalitarianism the fact that individuals did not have the same role is not the
point, age, sex and kin were vital defining points as to the division of labour. The fact
that things were complex does not equate to them being non-egalitarian.<
It is difficult to talk about these things, not least because so much of it is perforce second-hand, because there were indeed hundreds of Aboriginal cultures across the continent at the time, and because the Quadrant mob is deft at pinching anything it can for its ceaseless mills, but I personally think Tench one of the great journalists of the time. His humanism and empathy were exceptional (only Bougainville comes to my mind as his equal in that time and place, but I've not read as much of him), and his attempts at making sense (or at least allowing that sense there must be) of strange particulars were laudable indeed.
Tench records Bennelong's boat trip across the harbour with him (I think it was around the time of the dead whale), whereupon they come across a resting band of Aboriginees. Bennelong identifies one young woman (who shrinks at the sight of him, if memory serves) and sets about her with a sword, to the apparent unconcern of her fellows. Whether this points to a conventional class differential or a gender differential (or merely constitutes some rough justice in an egalitarian setting), or both, is hard to tell. I've not read it for a while, but do you remember it? If so, how does it read to you?
Cheers, Rob.
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