Page:The Native Tribes of South Australia (1879).djvu/20

 x INTRODUCTION. forgotten except by some of the earlier colonists. The Poonindie mission is now carried on without Government assistance. The mission at Point Macleay, established for the care of the natives who inhabit the country bordering upon Lakes Alexandrina and Albert and the Lower Murray, is also carried out without subsidy from the public purse. The general care of the Aborigines is entrusted to the mounted police, who periodically distribute blankets, flour, tea, sugar, &c., to the natives in those parts of the country where any of them survive, or from time to time may make their appearance. It is impossible, at the lapse of forty years after the first settlement of South Australia, to arrive at the exact measure of the extinction which has fallen upon the native races. In the early days, the Europeans were too busily engaged in locating themselves on their new possessions, and in the active task of rendering a wild country fit for the habitation of civilised men, to trouble themselves greatly about the native tribes, whose lands were confiscated for their use. No census of the Aborigines was attempted to be taken. Any estimate, therefore, of what their numbers then were, must now be to some extent conjectural. In 1842, Mr. Moorhouse, who was Chief Protector of Aborigines in South Australia, estimated that there were about 3000 scattered over the tract of country extending 160 miles north and 200 miles east of Adelaide. Mr. Eyre, the protector at Moorundi, on the Murray, who quotes this estimate, considers that they must have amounted to at least double that number. Captain (now Sir George Grey, K.C.B.), however, found the number of inhabitants to the square mile to vary so much from district to district, that he could not arrive at any computation which would even nearly approach the truth. Assuming Mr. Eyre’s estimate to be correct, as applied to the area given by Mr. Moorhouse, the rest of the colony would at least contain an equal number. This would give a total of about 12,000 souls, a number which cannot be considered to be excessive. The census of 1876, published by authority, gives the number of the Aborigines of all ages and of both sexes as 3953 for the whole of the province. Of these only 1000 are to be