Page:The Native Tribes of South Australia (1879).djvu/227

 IDENTIFICATION OF THE MURDERED PEOPLE. 153 habited by a fierce and vigorous tribe of the natives belonging to the nation called Narrinyeri. But we must proceed. On the 31st Mr. Pullen and his party continued their voyage up the Coorong in search of the wreck from which the murdered people had come. They saw several natives, but at first they all kept at a distance and appeared to be frightened. At last they managed to communicate with them, and learned that other white people had been killedsome on one side of the Coorong, and some on the otherand that two men and one woman had crossed to the islands (probably Mundoo and Towadjeri), and had been killed there. On the 1st of August the party saw many natives with European clothing, and the next day came upon the tracks of people on the mud of the shore which were evidently not natives’. There were the marks of the children’s footsteps; and in places these disappeared, as if the men had carried the weary little ones. On the 9th of August the party got back to the Goolwa (or Elbow, as it was then called). The impression on their minds at that time was that some of the shipwrecked people had escaped. The particulars brought by Mr. Pullen’s party, and especially the rings found on the fingers of two of the bodies of the women, led to the identification of the persons who had been murdered. They were found to be the passengers and crew of the brigantine Maria, 36 tons, of Hobart Town. She had arrived in Port Adelaide on the 7th of June, 1840, and had sailed again on the 21st June following, under the command of Capt. Smith, for Hobart Town, in ballast. According to the South Australian Register of August 15th, 1840, the passengers and crew were as follows:  There were Captain Smith and his wife and the mate, and eight men and boys before the mast. The passengers were Mr. and Mrs. Denham and family, consisting of three boys and two girls, George Young Green and wife, Thomas Daniel and wife, Mrs. York and infant, James Strutt (a servant of Mr. Denham’s), and Mr. Murray. Mr. Denham and Mrs. York were, it appears, brother and sister. The total number on board, then, was twenty-six.