Page:The Native Tribes of South Australia (1879).djvu/21

 INTRODUCTION. xi found scattered about the settled districts. The disproportion between the sexes is significant, there being 2203 males to 1750 females. Of the males, 217, or 0.11 per cent only of the adults (1862), were engaged in any kind of occupation with the settlers. These figures show that the whole of the native population of the province at the present time, is not much more than half of that which inhabited the settled districts in 1842; and where now a blackfellow is almost unknown, the black population at the foundation of the colony was, as has been seen, about 12,000a very small number for such an extensive territory. The black population now being 3953, it would seem that 67 per cent of them, with all that belonged to them, have gone from the face of the earth in forty-two years. In South Australia there have been no wars against the Aborigines. In the very early days of the colony, some tribes were attacked and chastised for wholesale murders, committed by them on shipwrecked people and parties travelling overland with stock. Some also were shot by settlers, sometimes in self-defence, and in many cases without adequate provocation. All the deaths, however, which can be ascribed to this cause, fail to establish such occurrences as forming one of the principal causes of their disappearance. All who have written upon the subject of the Australian native tribes acknowledge that they vanish before the white settler. Even in cases where they have been guarded from the habits and the maladies which are to some extent incidental to civilisation, the result has been the same, though not so speedily attained. A brief glance at the causes which have contributed to this end may be found interesting. There can be no doubt, from the testimony of those who had much intercourse with the natives, that before the Europeans came into the country, and before they could have had any influence over them, the Aborigines were decreasing in number. Habits and practices, religious or otherwise, helped to cut the races short; and infanticide, as well as cannibalism, played their horrible part in accelerating the catastrophe. The native women cannot be considered less fruitful than the women of other