Page:History of New South Wales from the records, Volume 2.djvu/239

 THE KATIVES. 201 tion, ending frequently in loBs of life, arose. The convicts ^^ftt stole the natives' nets and spears or destroyed their canoes; the blacks^ in retnm^ speared the white men whenever they could do so with safety. According to Phillip, whose knowledge of the circumstances must be regarded as accu- rate^ the convicts were, with few exceptions, the aggressors. When two men were kiUed by natives at fiushcutters' Bay, ^, ^j,, soon after the foundation of the settlement, he refused to ^^"' take any measures to punish the murderers, because he was convinced that they had killed the convicts " in their own defence, or in defending their canoes.'^* Many convicts were killed and wounded after this in Phillip's time, and, according to his despatches, these outrages were nearly always committed in revenge for injuries done to the convicts the natives by the convicts. On the 12th February, 1790, a year before the destruction of Ballooderry's canoe, Phillip reported to the Home Department that one convict had been killed and ten wounded since November, 1788, He explained that it was ''impossible to prevent the convicts from straggling, and the natives, having been robbed and illtreated, now attack those they meet unarmed." In other Repriaato ..., by the words, they took revenge for the injuries they had received natiyea. at the hands of the white man, according to aboriginal custom and precedent. The quarrel with Ballooderry and his friends did a great deal of harm. It not only deprived the settlement of the advantages that were gained from an interchange of com- modities with the natives — it estranged the people, and stnined caused them to assume a more hostile attitude than they had taken up before. Soon after Ballooderry had been warned not to approach the settlements, an attack was made upon a settler at Prospect Hill, and it was this, according to Collins, that compelled Phillip to depart from his instructions as to the disposition of the land, and place settlers on contiguous lots, instead of separating them by areas of land reserved • Historical Records, toI. i, part 2, pp. 148, 167, 171 ; toI. ii, p. 690.