Tasmanian Aborigines. Tasmania. Technology and material culture

…Are we dealing with intelligent monkeys or very lowly developed people?
Oldfield, 1865
The only sane and logical solution to an inferior race is to destroy it.
H. J. Wells, 1902

In the photo: the last indigenous people of Tasmania

One of the most shameful pages in the history of English colonial expansion is the extermination of the native population of Fr. Tasmania.,

British settlers in Australia, and especially in Tasmania, for their own prosperity, systematically destroyed the indigenous population and undermined the foundations of their lives. The British "needed" all the lands of the natives with favorable climatic conditions. “Europeans can hope to prosper because… blacks will soon disappear…

If the natives are shot in the same way as crows are shot in some countries, then the [native] population must be greatly reduced over time,” wrote Robert Knox in his “philosophical study on the influence of race.” Alan Moorehead described the fatal changes that befell Australia in this way: “In Sydney, the wild tribes were washed out. In Tasmania they were exterminated to a man... by settlers... and convicts... they were all hungry for land, and none of them was going to let the blacks stop it.

However, those gentle and kind-hearted people whom Cook had visited half a century before were not as submissive as on the mainland. After the farmers took away the land from the indigenous people (primarily in Tasmania, where the climate was colder), the natives with spears in their hands tried to resist the newcomers armed with firearms. In response, the British organized a real hunt for them. In Tasmania, such a hunt for people took place with the sanction of the British authorities: “The final extermination on a large scale could only be carried out with the help of justice and the armed forces ... The soldiers of the fortieth regiment drove the natives between two boulders, shot

all the men, and then dragged the women and children out of the rock crevices to blow their brains out” (ISSO). If the natives were "unkind [unaccommodating]", the British concluded that the only way out of the situation was to destroy them. The natives were "hunted incessantly, hunted down like fallow deer." Those who could be caught were taken away. In 1835, the last surviving local resident was taken out. Moreover, these measures were not secret, no one was ashamed of them, and the government supported this policy.

“So, the hunt for people began, and over time it became more and more cruel. In 1830, Tasmania was placed under martial law; a chain of armed men was lined up all over the island, who tried to drive the natives into a trap. The natives managed to get through the cordon, but the will to live left the hearts of the savages, fear was stronger than despair ... ”Felix Maynard, a doctor on a French whaling ship, recalled the systematic raids on the natives. "The Tasmanians were useless and [now] all are dead," Hammond believed.
* Hammond John Lawrence Le Breton (1872-1949) - historian and journalist.

The Europeans found the island quite densely populated. R. Pöh believes that about 6,000 natives could exist in Tasmania by the products of hunting and gathering. Wars between the natives did not go beyond petty tribal feuds. Apparently there were no hunger strikes, at least the Europeans did not find the natives exhausted.

The first Europeans were received by the Tasmanians with the greatest friendliness. According to Cook, the Tasmanians of all the "savages" he saw were the most good-natured and trusting people. "They did not have a ferocious appearance, but seemed kind and cheerful without distrust of strangers."

When in 1803 the first English settlement was founded on the island, the Tasmanians also reacted to the colonists without any hostility. Only the violence and cruelty of the Europeans forced the Tasmanians to change their attitude towards whites. In the sources we find numerous colorful examples of these violence and atrocities. “Someone named Carrots,” says H. Parker, “killed a native from whom he wanted to steal his wife, cut off his head, hung it like a toy around the neck of the murdered man and forced the woman to follow him.” The same author reports the exploits of a seal trader who “captured 15 native women and settled them around the islets of Bass Strait to hunt seals for him. If by his arrival the women did not have time to prepare the prescribed number of skins, he would tie the perpetrators to trees for 24-36 hours in a row, and from time to time he whipped them with rods.

In the early 1820s, the Tasmanians made attempts at organized armed resistance to European rapists and murderers. The so-called “black war” begins, which soon turned into a simple British hunt for Tasmanians, completely defenseless against white firearms.

H. Hull says bluntly that “black hunting was the favorite sport of the colonists. They chose a day and invited neighbors with their families for a picnic ... after dinner, the gentlemen took guns and dogs and, accompanied by 2-3 servants from the exiles, went to the forest to look for the Tasmanians. The hunters returned in triumph if they managed to shoot a woman or 1-2 men.

“A European colonist,” says Ling Roth, “had a jar in which he kept the ears of people he managed to kill as hunting trophies.”

“Many blacks with women and children gathered in a ravine near the city ... the men sat around a large fire, while the women were busy preparing food for dinner. The natives were taken by surprise by a detachment of soldiers who, without warning, opened fire on them, and then rushed to finish off the wounded. One soldier pierced a child crawling near his murdered mother with a bayonet and threw him into the fire. This soldier himself told about his “feat” to the traveler Hull, and when the latter expressed indignation at his cruelty, he exclaimed with sincere surprise: “After all, it was only a child!”

In 1834 everything was finished. “December 28,” says E. Reclus, “the last natives, pursued like wild animals, were driven to the tip of one elevated cape, and this event was celebrated with triumph. The lucky hunter, Robinson, was rewarded by the government with an estate of 400 hectares and a significant amount of money.

The prisoners were first transferred from island to island, and then all the Tasmanians, including two hundred, were imprisoned in one swampy valley on. Flinders. Within 10 years, 3/4 of the exiles died.

In 1860 there were only eleven Tasmanians left. In 1876, the last Tasmanian, Truganini, dies, the island turns out, according to English official documents, to be completely “cleared” of natives, except for an insignificant number of Europeanized mestizos of Anglo-Tasmanian origin.

“During the Holocaust, Charles Darwin visited Tasmania. He wrote: "I'm afraid there is no doubt that the evil that is happening here, and its consequences, is the result of the shameless behavior of some of our countrymen." This is putting it mildly. It was a monstrous, unforgivable crime ... The natives had only two alternatives: either resist and die, or submit and become a parody of themselves, ”wrote Alan Moorehead. Polish traveler Count Strzelecki,

(* Strzelecki Edmund Pavel (1796-1873) - Polish naturalist, geographer and geologist, explorer of America, Oceania and Australia) who arrived in Australia in the late 1830s, could not help but express the horror of what he saw: “Humiliated, depressed, confused ... emaciated and covered in dirty rags, they are [once] the natural masters of this land - [now] more ghosts of the past than living people; they vegetate here in their melancholy existence, waiting for an even more melancholy end.” Strzelecki also mentioned "the examination by one race of the corpse of another - with the verdict: "She died overtaken by the punishment of God." The extermination of the natives could be regarded as hunting, as a sport, because they seemed to have no soul.
True, Christian missionaries opposed the notions of the “lack of soul” among the “natives” and saved the lives of a considerable number of the last indigenous inhabitants of Australia. However
however, the constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia, already in force in the post-war years, prescribed (section 127) "not to take into account the natives" when calculating the population of individual states. Thus, the constitution denied their involvement in the human race. After all, back in 1865, Europeans, when confronted with natives, were not sure whether they were dealing with "intelligent monkeys or very lowly developed people."

Caring for "these beastmen" is "a crime against our own blood," Heinrich Himmler recalled in 1943, speaking of the Russians, who should have been subjugated to the Nordic master race.
The British, who were doing "unheard of things in colonization" in Australia (in the words of Adolf Hitler), did not need this kind of instruction. So, one message for 1885 reads:
«Чтобы успокоить ниггеров, им дали нечто потрясающее. The food [which was handed out to them] was half strychnine - and no one escaped his fate ... The owner of Long Lagoon, with the help of this trick, destroyed more than a hundred blacks. “In the old days in New South Wales, it was useless to get those who invited blacks over and gave them poisoned meat the punishment they deserved.” Некий Винсент Лесина еще в 1901 г. заявил в австралийском парламенте: «Ниггер должен исчезнуть с пути развития белого человека» - так «гласит закон эволюции». “We did not realize that by killing blacks we were breaking the law ... because it used to be practiced everywhere,” was the main argument of the British, who killed twenty-eight “friendly” (i.e. peaceful) natives in 1838. Prior to this massacre on Myell Creek, all actions to exterminate the indigenous inhabitants of Australia went unpunished. Only in the second year of the reign of Queen Victoria for such a crime, as an exception, seven Englishmen (from the lower strata) were hanged.

Nevertheless, in Queensland (northern Australia) at the end of the 19th century. невинной забавой считалось загнать целую семью «ниггеров» -мужа, жену и детей - в воду к крокодилам… Во время своего пребывания в Северном Квинсленде в 1880-1884 гг., норвежец Карл Лумхольц(*Лумхольц Карл Софус (1851-1922) - норвежский traveler, naturalist and ethnographer, explorer of Australia, Mexico, Indonesia) heard such statements: "Blacks can only be shot - they cannot be treated differently." One of the colonists remarked that this was a "hard ... but ... necessary principle." He himself shot all the men he met on his pastures, “because they are cattle-killers, women - because they give birth to cattle-killers, and children - because they [still] will be cattle-killers. They do not want to work and therefore are not good for anything but to get a bullet, ”the colonists complained to Lumholtz.

The racial status and history of the origin of the Tasmanian aborigines are the "gray spots" of anthropology. This is mainly due to the total destruction of the natives themselves in the middle of the 19th century by the British. To a somewhat lesser extent, by the destruction of paleoanthropological and craniological materials at the end of the 20th century.

Despite these difficulties, not much is known about the Tasmanians. V.R. Cabo has given a comprehensive and best available overview of all available material (Cabo, 1975). The craniology of the Tasmanians has been dealt with in detail in several monumental works (Macintosh et Barker, 1965; Morant, 1927, 1939; Wunderly, 1939).

The skulls of the Tasmanians are characterized by a small volume, in fact, a record on a global scale (perhaps only the Andamanese are smaller). The length of the skull is medium, the width and height are small; the skull is dolicho-, ortho- and metricocranial. The slight width of the skull is usually set high, although the lateral walls of the vault are almost or completely parallel when viewed from behind.

The forehead is medium wide, rather sloping, with a flattened cerebral part. The superciliary relief of the Tasmanians is strong, emphasized by a strong depression of the bridge of the nose. Sagittal Located relative to the body in the direction from front to back. the ridge of the frontal bone is often pronounced, although weaker than in the Australians, it rarely reaches the parietal bones, although the transverse profile of the vault is still roof-shaped. The forehead is moderately sloping: stronger than that of the Europeans, but less than that of the Australians. The temporal lines are high, although not as close to the sagittal line as in the Australians. The occipital part of the skull is somewhat extended backwards, but not as much as in the Australians; the occiput is medium wide, but slightly widened compared to the width of the entire skull. The occipital relief is rather weakly expressed, which is why the Tasmanians differ sharply from the Australians; the same can be said about other elements of the muscular relief on the skull. The surface of the bones is generally very smooth, and all possible edges are rounded. The temporal fossa is weakly expressed, flattened. The scales of the temporal bone are very elongated, low, with a straightened upper edge; the parietal notch is rather weakly expressed.

Typical skull of a Tasmanian woman.
Source: Morant G.M. Note on Dr. J. Wunderly's survey of Tasmanian crania // Biometrika, 1939, V.30, No. 3/4, p.341.

The face is very low, but medium-wide, euryenne, mesognathic. Type of protrusion of the face, intermediate between orthognathism and prognathism. , although alveolar prognathism One of the types of the structure of the skull, in which the facial region (in particular, the jaw) protrudes forward. may be pronounced. A characteristic feature of the Tasmanians is a sharp upper horizontal profiling. The zygomatic arches are thin, unlike the Australians. The orbits have smoothed edges, rectangular in shape, with parallel upper and lower edges, absolutely very low and medium wide, relatively chameconch. The nose is very low, but wide, hyperchameric, as a result of which

the relative width of the nose of the Tasmanians is one of the greatest in the world, surpassing Australian values.

The nasal bones are concave and extremely short; the ratio of their width to length is a world record. The width of the nasal bones is less than that of the Australians; while the bones are often sharply narrowed towards the end, and their transverse profile is very convex. The nasal spine is often extremely poorly developed, perhaps less than in all other groups of people, and the edges of the nasal opening (and the lateral ones too) are rounded and smoothed; as in all equatorials, nasal pits or gutters are often developed. The zygomatic bones are very small, which makes the Tasmanians sharply different from the Australians. Unlike Australians, the infraorbital space is small. The canine pits are often deep, although less developed than in Australians. The mandibular notches are not very strong. The alveolar process of the upper jaw is very low, usually sharply directed forward. The palate is long and medium wide, leptostaphylline, shallow or moderately deep, never deep, unlike the voluminous one of the Australians. The palate often has a sagittal ridge. The alveolar arch usually has parallel rows of postcanine teeth and is straightened anteriorly. On the lower jaw, the height of the symphysis Connection of bones through cartilage. The symphysis of the lower jaw (chin symphysis) connects the right and left halves of the jaw; matches the chin. usually higher than body height at the rear. The chin protrusion is moderately developed, the ascending branch of moderate proportions, without excessive expansion.

Tasmanian teeth are very large, close to the world record, although apparently smaller than that of Australians. Associated with this is the usually good development of the third molars, which are almost always in contact with the antagonists. Teeth have a complicated structure of enamel.

Of the specific features, one can note the absence of a groove above the supraorbital foramen, typical of other human races. The lambdoid suture and asterion almost always have intercalated ossicles.

Even more unique is the relatively frequent occurrence of the fourth molar.

In general, the structure of the skull of the Tasmanians, although it has a certain specificity, is very similar to that of the southeastern Australians: so much so that many of the largest racial scientists considered it possible to combine them within the same type as local variants (Hrdlicka, 1928, pp.81-90; Thorne, 1971, p.317). Yet, the differences between Tasmanians and Australians outweigh the difference between groups of the latter (Morant, 1927). One of the most significant differences between Tasmanians and Australians is the difference in the latitudinal dimensions of the skull: in the former, the maximum width of the skull is greater, and all other dimensions, including the facial ones, are smaller (Morant, 1927). It is clear that here we have not just a change in size, but a change in shape, and a very significant one at that. The same feature is perceived by the eye as a good prominence of the frontal and parietal tubercles and, accordingly, a pentagonoid skull when viewed from above in Tasmanians and the absence of tubercles in Australians with an ovoid arch (Wunderly, 1939). At the same time, the width of the forehead relative to the width of the skull of the Tasmanians is noticeably less than that of the Australians. In the facial skeleton, a sharp difference in the upper horizontal profiling is noteworthy: it is very large in the Tasmanians and somewhat weakened in the Australians; Tasmanians are mesognathic, while Australians are prognathic.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Tasmanians, self-name palava- aboriginal population Tasmania, Australia.

From 1803-1833, within only 30 years, the number of Tasmanian natives dropped from 5,000 to 300, mainly due to diseases brought from Europe and conflicts with British settlers. One of the last full-blooded Tasmanians, Truganini, died in 1876. Many people descended from the Tasmanian Aboriginals through intermarriage are now alive and they preserve the traditional Palawa culture.

The ancient population of Tasmania was divided into tribes, which, in turn, were divided into communities and families. The largest of them is the paredarerme tribe from the Oyster Bay, which included 10 groups-communities and numbered up to 800 people.

The coming of the Europeans

Notable Tasmanians

• Truganini is the last purebred Tasmanian.
• Fanny Cochrane Smith, of mixed ancestry, from whose words records of the Tasmanian language remain.
• William Lann or "King Billy"

Culture and art

As mentioned above, the life of the Tasmanians was very simple. The Tasmanians did not know how to fish and ate mainly plants, shellfish and the meat of local animals, which were killed with stone tools. It is alleged that the Tasmanians did not know how to make fire and were only able to maintain it, and if the fire went out, they had to follow the fire to the neighboring community, which sometimes resulted in a fight; today, however, some scholars dispute this view. They carried their few belongings in wicker baskets. The Tasmanians moved not only on foot, but also in canoes made of tree bark.

Tasmanians did not know how to sew and dressed in roughly fastened animal skins. They adorned themselves with shell necklaces, feathers and flowers, and painted their faces and bodies with charcoal and ocher, and inflicted decorative scars on themselves, probably as part of some ritual. Ocher mixed with fat was also used to fix hair.

From the testimonies of European colonists, it is known that the Tasmanians were able to paint, usually with the help of the same ocher. Unfortunately, most of their drawings have not survived due to the fragility of materials: as a rule, they painted on tree bark, from which canoes and huts were built. They depicted both abstract patterns and relatively "realistic" scenes of hunting or battles. The Tasmanians loved to sing and dance: several of their folk songs have come down to us in the recordings of Fanny Cochrane Smith.

Little is known about the beliefs of the Tasmanian Aborigines. According to missionary George Augustus Robinson, who took care of the last Tasmanian community on Flinders Island, the Tasmanians believed that "two men from heaven" brought the fire to them. European colonialists and missionaries reported that the Tasmanians believe in two spirits, good and evil: one rules the day, the other the night. In addition to these two main spirits, there were others, good and evil: seeing off a loved one on a long journey, the Tasmanians sang songs to appease the spirits and persuade them to send protection to the traveler. The Tasmanians believed in the immortality of the soul; according to the same Robinson, the other world in their minds mingled with England, which they called "a distant land", and when asked where the dead go after death, they answered: "To England, where there are many relatives." They burned the bodies of the dead. Other natives believed that after death they would be born again on their native island. They carried the bones of deceased loved ones with them as amulets, attributing to them the ability to heal diseases.

see also

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Links

• // Non-cultural anthropology
• // Anthropogenesis.ru

• from the Brief Guide No. 18"
• (from the Australian Bureau of Statistics)
• (contains edited transcript of 2002 ABC radio interviews by Peter McCutcheon with historian and author Keith Windschuttle and historian and author Henry Reynolds)
• a sympathetic New Criterion review of Keith Windschuttle’s book casting doubt on a supposed Tasmanian genocide.
• (ANTaR)
• Reconciliation Australia
• of Tom Haydon's documentary "The Last Tasmanian" (1978)
• article from The Sydney Morning Herald newspaper by Richard Flanagan
• from the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission.
• Sunday with Keith Windschuttle, Prof. Henry Reynolds, Prof. Cassandra Pybus, Prof. Lyndall Ryan, and others

Notes

1. William Dalrymple(HTML). The Sunday Times (October 14, 2007). Retrieved March 14, 2008.
2. Jared Diamond. Guns, Germs, and Steel(1999 ed.). Norton. p. 492. ISBN 0-393-06131-0.
3. Taylor, Rebe Aboriginal History Journal, Vol 32, 2008, at ANU E Press
4. Manne, Robert (2003). whitewash. 317-318: Schwartz Publishing. ISBN 0-9750769-0-6.
5. Ryan, Lyndell: The Aboriginal Tasmanians, Second Edition, Allen & Unwin, 1996, ISBN 1-86373-965-3
6. Flood, Josephine: The Original Australians: Story of the Aboriginal People, Allen & Unwin, 2006 ISBN 978-1741148725.
8. STOLEN GENERATIONS PUBLIC RELEASE, Premier Paul Lennon www.premier.tas.gov.au/speeches/stolen.html
13. Friedrich Max Müller Anthropological Religion. Asian Educational Services, 1986

Literature

• Kabo V. R. Tasmanians and the Tasmanian problem. - M.: Nauka, Main edition of Eastern literature, 1975. - 200 p.: ill.
• Sword S. Australia and Tasmania. - M.: Type. I. N. Kushnereva, 1898. - 3rd ed. - 150 s.
• Alexander, Alison (editor) (2005) The Companion to Tasmanian History Center for Tasmanian Historical Studies, University of Tasmania, Hobart. ISBN 1-86295-223-X.
• Robson, L.L. (1983) A history of Tasmania. Volume 1. Van Diemen's Land from the earliest times to 1855 ISBN 0-19-554364-5.
• Robson, L.L. (1991) A history of Tasmania. Volume II. Colony and state from 1856 to the 1980s Melbourne, Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-553031-4.

An excerpt characterizing the Tasmanians

Along the lanes of Khamovniki, the prisoners walked alone with their escort and the wagons and wagons that belonged to the escorts and rode behind; but, having gone out to the grocery stores, they found themselves in the middle of a huge, closely moving artillery convoy, mixed with private wagons.
At the very bridge, everyone stopped, waiting for those who were riding in front to advance. From the bridge, the prisoners opened behind and in front of endless rows of other moving convoys. To the right, where the Kaluga road curved past Neskuchny, disappearing into the distance, stretched endless ranks of troops and convoys. These were the troops of the Beauharnais corps that had come out first; Behind, along the embankment and across the Stone Bridge, Ney's troops and wagon trains stretched.
Davout's troops, to which the prisoners belonged, went through the Crimean ford and already partly entered Kaluga Street. But the carts were so stretched out that the last trains of Beauharnais had not yet left Moscow for Kaluzhskaya Street, and the head of Ney's troops was already leaving Bolshaya Ordynka.
Having passed the Crimean ford, the prisoners moved several steps and stopped, and again moved, and on all sides the carriages and people became more and more embarrassed. After walking for more than an hour those several hundred steps that separate the bridge from Kaluzhskaya Street, and having reached the square where Zamoskvoretsky Streets converge with Kaluzhskaya Street, the prisoners, squeezed into a heap, stopped and stood for several hours at this intersection. From all sides was heard the incessant, like the sound of the sea, the rumble of wheels, and the tramp of feet, and incessant angry cries and curses. Pierre stood pressed against the wall of the charred house, listening to this sound, which in his imagination merged with the sounds of the drum.
Several captured officers, in order to see better, climbed the wall of the burnt house, near which Pierre was standing.
- To the people! Eka to the people! .. And they piled on the guns! Look: furs ... - they said. “Look, you bastards, they robbed him… There, behind him, on a cart… After all, this is from an icon, by God!.. It must be the Germans. And our muzhik, by God!.. Ah, scoundrels! Here they are, the droshky - and they captured! .. Look, he sat down on the chests. Fathers! .. Fight! ..
- So it's in the face then, in the face! So you can't wait until evening. Look, look ... and this, of course, is Napoleon himself. You see, what horses! in monograms with a crown. This is a folding house. Dropped the bag, can't see. They fought again ... A woman with a child, and not bad. Yes, well, they will let you through... Look, there is no end. Russian girls, by God, girls! In the carriages, after all, how calmly they sat down!
Again, a wave of general curiosity, as near the church in Khamovniki, pushed all the prisoners to the road, and Pierre, thanks to his growth over the heads of others, saw what had so attracted the curiosity of the prisoners. In three carriages, intermingled between the charging boxes, they rode, closely sitting on top of each other, discharged, in bright colors, rouged, something screaming with squeaky voices of a woman.
From the moment Pierre realized the appearance of a mysterious force, nothing seemed strange or scary to him: neither a corpse smeared with soot for fun, nor these women hurrying somewhere, nor the conflagration of Moscow. Everything that Pierre now saw made almost no impression on him - as if his soul, preparing for a difficult struggle, refused to accept impressions that could weaken it.
The train of women has passed. Behind him again trailed carts, soldiers, wagons, soldiers, decks, carriages, soldiers, boxes, soldiers, occasionally women.
Pierre did not see people separately, but saw their movement.
All these people, the horses seemed to be driven by some invisible force. All of them, during the hour during which Pierre watched them, floated out of different streets with the same desire to pass quickly; they all the same, colliding with others, began to get angry, fight; white teeth bared, eyebrows frowned, the same curses were thrown over and over, and on all faces there was the same youthfully resolute and cruelly cold expression, which struck Pierre in the morning at the sound of a drum on the corporal's face.
Already before evening, the escort commander gathered his team and, shouting and arguing, squeezed into the carts, and the prisoners, surrounded on all sides, went out onto the Kaluga road.
They walked very quickly, without resting, and stopped only when the sun had already begun to set. The carts moved one on top of the other, and people began to prepare for the night. Everyone seemed angry and unhappy. For a long time, curses, angry cries and fights were heard from different sides. The carriage, which was riding behind the escorts, advanced on the escorts' wagon and pierced it with a drawbar. Several soldiers from different directions ran to the wagon; some beat on the heads of the horses harnessed to the carriage, turning them, others fought among themselves, and Pierre saw that one German was seriously wounded in the head with a cleaver.
It seemed that all these people now experienced, when they stopped in the middle of the field in the cold twilight of an autumn evening, the same feeling of unpleasant awakening from the haste that gripped everyone upon leaving and impetuous movement somewhere. Stopping, everyone seemed to understand that it was still unknown where they were going, and that this movement would be a lot of hard and difficult.
The escorts treated the prisoners at this halt even worse than when they set out. At this halt, for the first time, the meat food of the captives was issued with horse meat.
From the officers to the last soldier, it was noticeable in everyone, as it were, a personal bitterness against each of the prisoners, which so unexpectedly replaced the previously friendly relations.
This exasperation intensified even more when, when counting the prisoners, it turned out that during the bustle, leaving Moscow, one Russian soldier, pretending to be sick from his stomach, fled. Pierre saw how a Frenchman beat a Russian soldier because he moved far from the road, and heard how the captain, his friend, reprimanded the non-commissioned officer for the escape of a Russian soldier and threatened him with a court. To the excuse of the non-commissioned officer that the soldier was sick and could not walk, the officer said that he was ordered to shoot those who would fall behind. Pierre felt that the fatal force that crushed him during the execution and which was invisible during captivity now again took possession of his existence. He was scared; but he felt how, in proportion to the efforts made by the fatal force to crush him, a force of life independent of it grew and grew stronger in his soul.
Pierre dined on rye flour soup with horse meat and talked with his comrades.
Neither Pierre nor any of his comrades spoke about what they saw in Moscow, nor about the rudeness of the treatment of the French, nor about the order to shoot, which was announced to them: everyone was, as if in rebuff to the deteriorating situation, especially lively and cheerful . They talked about personal memories, about funny scenes seen during the campaign, and hushed up conversations about the present situation.
The sun has long since set. Bright stars lit up somewhere in the sky; the red, fire-like glow of the rising full moon spread over the edge of the sky, and the huge red ball oscillated surprisingly in the grayish haze. It became light. The evening was already over, but the night had not yet begun. Pierre got up from his new comrades and went between the fires to the other side of the road, where, he was told, the captured soldiers were standing. He wanted to talk to them. On the road, a French sentry stopped him and ordered him to turn back.
Pierre returned, but not to the fire, to his comrades, but to the unharnessed wagon, which had no one. He crossed his legs and lowered his head, sat down on the cold ground at the wheel of the wagon, and sat motionless for a long time, thinking. More than an hour has passed. Nobody bothered Pierre. Suddenly he burst out laughing with his thick, good-natured laugh so loudly that people from different directions looked around in surprise at this strange, obviously lonely laugh.
– Ha, ha, ha! Pierre laughed. And he said aloud to himself: “The soldier didn’t let me in.” Caught me, locked me up. I am being held captive. Who me? Me! Me, my immortal soul! Ha, ha, ha! .. Ha, ha, ha! .. - he laughed with tears in his eyes.
Some man got up and came up to see what this strange big man alone was laughing about. Pierre stopped laughing, got up, moved away from the curious and looked around him.
Previously, loudly noisy with the crackling of fires and the talk of people, the huge, endless bivouac subsided; the red fires of the fires went out and grew pale. High in the bright sky stood a full moon. Forests and fields, previously invisible outside the camp, now opened up in the distance. And even farther than these forests and fields could be seen a bright, oscillating, inviting endless distance. Pierre looked into the sky, into the depths of the departing, playing stars. “And all this is mine, and all this is in me, and all this is me! thought Pierre. “And they caught all this and put it in a booth, fenced off with boards!” He smiled and went to bed with his comrades.

In the first days of October, another truce came to Kutuzov with a letter from Napoleon and an offer of peace, deceptively signified from Moscow, while Napoleon was already not far ahead of Kutuzov, on the old Kaluga road. Kutuzov answered this letter in the same way as the first one sent from Lauriston: he said that there could be no talk of peace.
Soon after this, from the partisan detachment of Dorokhov, who was walking to the left of Tarutin, a report was received that troops had appeared in Fominsky, that these troops consisted of Brusier's division, and that this division, separated from other troops, could easily be exterminated. Soldiers and officers again demanded activity. Staff generals, excited by the memory of the ease of victory at Tarutin, insisted on Kutuzov's execution of Dorokhov's proposal. Kutuzov did not consider any offensive necessary. The average came out, that which was to be accomplished; a small detachment was sent to Fominsky, which was supposed to attack Brussier.
By a strange chance, this appointment - the most difficult and most important, as it turned out later - was received by Dokhturov; that same modest, little Dokhturov, whom no one described to us as making battle plans, flying in front of regiments, throwing crosses at batteries, etc., who was considered and called indecisive and impenetrable, but the same Dokhturov, whom during all the Russian wars with the French, from Austerlitz and up to the thirteenth year, we find commanders wherever only the situation is difficult. In Austerlitz, he remains the last at the Augusta dam, gathering regiments, saving what is possible when everything is running and dying and not a single general is in the rear guard. He, sick with a fever, goes to Smolensk with twenty thousand to defend the city against the entire Napoleonic army. In Smolensk, he had barely dozed off at the Molokhov Gates, in a paroxysm of fever, he was awakened by the cannonade across Smolensk, and Smolensk held out all day. On Borodino day, when Bagration was killed and the troops of our left flank were killed in the ratio of 9 to 1 and the entire force of the French artillery was sent there, no one else was sent, namely the indecisive and impenetrable Dokhturov, and Kutuzov was in a hurry to correct his mistake when he sent there another. And the small, quiet Dokhturov goes there, and Borodino is the best glory of the Russian army. And many heroes are described to us in verse and prose, but almost not a word about Dokhturov.

Within only 30 years, 1803-1833, the number of Tasmanian natives dropped sharply from 5,000 to 300, mainly due to diseases brought from Europe and conflicts with British settlers. One of the last full-blooded Tasmanians, Truganini, died in 1876. Many people descended from the Tasmanian natives as a result of intermarriages are now alive, and they preserve the traditional Palava culture.

Legislative definition of "natives"

In June 2005, the Tasmanian Legislative Council approved a new definition in the Aboriginal Lands Act. The law was passed so that Aboriginal people could elect their own Aboriginal Lands Council (and without a definition of the concept of "Aboriginal" it was not clear who had the right to elect this council).

According to the law, a person has the right to be called a "Tasmanian native" if he meets the following criteria:

• lineage (ancestors)
• self-identification
• community recognition

Compensation for the "stolen generation"

On August 13, 1997, the Tasmanian Parliament passed a Statement of Apology (referring to the formerly common policy of removing children from Aboriginal families to be placed "for re-education" in orphanages). The application was adopted unanimously.

Earlier, in November 2006, Tasmania became the first Australian state to offer financial compensation to the "stolen generation" - the descendants of Aboriginal people forcibly removed from their families by government agencies and church missions in the period 1900-1972. Up to 40 Aboriginal descendants were eligible for A$5 million in compensation.

Notable Tasmanians

• Truganini and Fanny Cochrane Smith, the last full-blooded Tasmanians. According to Fanny Smith, records of the Tasmanian language remain.
• William Lann or "King Billy"

Links

• Skull of a Tasmanian as a political tool // Non-cultural anthropology

• Records Relating to Tasmanian Aboriginal People from the Archives Office of Tasmania "Brief Guide No. 18"
• Statistics - Tasmania - History - Aboriginal occupation (from the Australian Bureau of Statistics)
• Historian dismisses Tasmanian aboriginal genocide "myth" (contains edited transcript of 2002 ABC radio interviews by Peter McCutcheon with historian and author Keith Windschuttle and historian and author Henry Reynolds)
• "Native Fiction" a sympathetic New Criterion review of Keith Windschuttle's book casting doubt on a supposed Tasmanian genocide.
• Reconciliation Australia
• 1984 Review of Tom Haydon's documentary "The Last Tasmanian" (1978)
• "Tension in Tasmania over who is an Aboriginal" Article from The Sydney Morning Herald newspaper by Richard Flanagan
• A history from the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission.
• Transcript of current affairs television program Sunday with Keith Windschuttle, Prof. Henry Reynolds, Prof. Cassandra Pybus, Prof. Lyndall Ryan, and others

Notes

Literature

• Alexander, Alison (editor) (2005) The Companion to Tasmanian History Center for Tasmanian Historical Studies, University of Tasmania, Hobart. ISBN 186295223X.
• Robson, L.L. (1983) A history of Tasmania. Volume 1. Van Diemen's Land from the earliest times to 1855 Melbourne, Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195543645.
• Robson, L.L. (1991) A history of Tasmania. Volume II. Colony and state from 1856 to the 1980s Melbourne, Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195530314.

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Tasmania is a small (its area is 67,897 km 2) island off the southeastern coast of Australia, separated from the mainland by the Bass Strait (224 km wide). Resting on a common base with Australia and being connected with it by numerous islets, Tasmania, in its geological structure, is part of the mainland. Abel Tasman, who discovered the island on November 24, 1642, accepted it as part of the mainland. That Tasmania was an island was established only in 1798 by Flinders and Bass, who were the first navigators who traveled around Tasmania.

Geographic conditions

The coast of Tasmania is indented by numerous bays. Two mountain ranges cross the island from north to south. The interior of the island is a plateau covered with grass. The slopes of the mountains are overgrown with dense forest (eucalyptus trees, tree ferns). The climate is temperate, humid; snow often falls in winter. The vegetation is generally of the same character as that of southeastern Australia, but there are also local forms characteristic of a colder climate. The fauna is also similar to the fauna of southeastern Australia, but is much poorer in species.

Indigenous people and their fate

The Europeans found quite a large population on the island. Exact figures are not available. The first observers determined the size of the indigenous population very differently: from 1 thousand (Backhouse) to 20 thousand (Melville) 1 . There is reason to believe that about 6 thousand people could exist in Tasmania by hunting and gathering.

The colonization of Tasmania by the British led to the rapid disappearance of the indigenous population of the island from the face of the earth. The first meetings of the Tasmanians with the whites did not seem to foretell such an outcome. European navigators who visited the island invariably met with the most friendly attitude towards themselves. According to Cook, the Tasmanians of all the "savages" he saw were the most good-natured and trusting: "They did not have a ferocious or wild appearance ... but seemed kind and cheerful, without distrust of strangers."

When the first English settlement was founded on the island in 1803, the Tasmanians also did not at first show the slightest hostility towards white newcomers. Only the violence and cruelty of the Europeans forced the Tasmanians to change their attitude.

Numerous examples of these violence and atrocities can be found in the sources. So, in Parker we read: “Someone named Carrots killed a native from whom he wanted to steal his wife, cut off his head, hung it like a toy around the neck of the wife of the murdered man and forced the woman to follow him.” The same author recounts the "exploits" of a seal trader who "captured ten or fifteen native women and settled them in the islets of Bass Strait to hunt seals for him. If by his arrival the women did not have time to prepare the prescribed number of skins, he would tie the perpetrators to trees for 24-36 hours as a punishment, and from time to time he whipped them with rods; sometimes he killed the disobedient” 2 .

A pastoral colonist had a female slave, whom he kept tied up with bull fetters. “There is no doubt,” says an eyewitness of this incident, “that such and even worse treatment of the natives by white pastoralists was the first and main reason for the hostility with which the latter now treat all whites.”

In the early 1820s, the Tasmanians began to make attempts at organized armed resistance to European rapists. The "black war" ("black war") flared up, which soon turned into a real hunt for the colonists for the Tasmanians, completely defenseless against the firearms of the colonialists.

G. Hull directly says that “hunting for blacks was the favorite sport of the colonists. They chose a day and invited the neighbors and their families to a picnic ... after dinner, the gentlemen took guns and dogs and, accompanied by two or three servants from the exiles, went to the forest to look for blacks. .. Sometimes they managed to shoot a woman or one or two men.”

Ling-Roth gives a vivid example of the merciless cruelty with which the British waged the "black war": "A number of blacks with women and children gathered in a ravine near the settlement ... the men sat around a large fire, and the women were busy preparing opossums and bandicoots for dinner . The natives were taken by surprise by a detachment of soldiers who, without warning, opened fire on them, and then rushed to finish off the wounded.

Almost all of this evidence is collected in Ling-Roth's very conscientious work, The Aborigines of Tasmania, already mentioned, which is a good summary of what is known about the Tasmanians. The book provides information about those persons (their names are also given) from whom Ling-Rot borrowed his material.

In 1834 the "black war" was over.

“December 28,” says Eliza Reclus, “the last natives, pursued like wild animals, were captured at the tip of a certain elevated cape, and this event was celebrated with triumph. Happy hunter Robinson received a 400-hectare estate and a significant amount of money as a reward from the government; in addition, a public subscription gave him about 200 thousand francs. The prisoners were first transferred from island to island, and then all the Tasmanians, including two hundred, were imprisoned in one swampy valley of Flinders Island. They were given food supplies and catechism lessons. Within ten years, more than three-quarters of the exiles died. In 1860, only eleven Tasmanians remained. In 1876, the last Tasmanian, Truganina, died. nicknamed "Lalla Rook" by the British.

The island, in the words of English official documents, was completely "cleared of the natives", except for a negligible number of Europeanized mestizos of Anglo-Tasmanian origin.

Technology and material culture

The culture of the Tasmanians, due to their rapid extermination, has remained little studied: researchers are forced to base themselves on fragmentary evidence of old travelers and on archaeological material in the form of stone tools found on the island. The latter were studied purely formally, and it is not surprising that we find comparisons in the literature with the tools of all Paleolithic epochs. Thus, Balfour, who studied 5,000 samples of stone tools from forty sites in the northern and eastern districts of Tasmania, brings their technique closer to the Mousterian and Aurignacian and finds that the similarity with the Aurignacian culture is more clearly expressed. The most common in Tasmania, as Balfour points out, is the "barbed scraper", which is one of the characteristic tools of the late Paleolithic. Sollas draws an analogy between Tasmanian and Acheulean (!) cultures. S. Johnston points to similarities with pre-Aurignacian forms and, in particular, with known forms of the Mousterian industry. These purely formal comparisons are completely wrong, and just as wrong are the conclusions that were drawn from them, the conclusions about some unusually low level of development, at which the Tasmanians, exterminated by the colonialists, allegedly stood. Much more likely is the convergence of Tasmanian tools with rough forms of Early Neolithic "macroliths".

The vast majority of stone tools (terro-watta) found in Tasmania are obviously obtained by simply breaking fragments from a single stone (nucleus) and do not have any traces of further processing. According to the description of the colonist Reiner, whose observations date back to 1813-1818, the natives broke the stone into pieces by hitting it against a rock or another stone, and from the resulting fragments they chose those that had sharp cutting edges. The worker, throwing one stone at another, lying on the ground, bounced off, spreading his legs wide so as not to be wounded by fragments. The favorite material for Tasmanian terro-watt servants is hornfels, rich deposits of which are near Dismal Creek. As an exception, there are samples that testify to a more careful beating, through which they are deliberately given a certain shape.

Although there are thus indications of the existence of specialized forms among the Tasmanians, yet most stone tools had a universal use. With the help of terro-watt, the Tasmanians skinned kangaroos and other marsupials, cut meat, made notches in trees to facilitate climbing, smoothed and sharpened spears and clubs; the same terro-watt was used to shave the hair on the head of women, to scarify, to scrape red ocher, which, mixed with fat, lubricated the hair.

The universality of the terro-watt is indicated by the absence in the Tasmanian dialects of words for different types of tools: all types of stone tools were designated by the same word ( tronutta , trowutta , terror - watta , derived from trona , or Terona - stone).

Balfour mentions one example of a tool with a polished working edge. He attributes the origin of this tool to "Australian influence"; the Australians, a small number of which were transported to Tasmania by the British in the middle of the 19th century, brought, in his opinion, stone axes with a handle found in Tasmania in single samples: the Tasmanians, it is believed, did not know the latter.

Bone processing was completely unknown to the Tasmanians. The so-called "spoons" are really just kangaroo brooches; they have no traces of processing.

The shells were used raw as drinking vessels. Sometimes the Tasmanians used rakorshuy instead of stone for turning spears. Small shells, namely Elenchus, served as material for necklaces.

The fighting and hunting weapons of the Tasmanians were spears and clubs. The spears were pointed sticks 2-3, even up to 4 m long and as thick as a finger. They could be thrown no more than 40 m. The northern tribes used spears with a serrated end. There are indications that the Tasmanians sometimes poisoned their spears, using cadaveric poison for this purpose. The Tasmanians, unlike the Australians, did not know spear throwers.

The Tasmanian clubs are described as short sticks, pointed at both ends, about 2.5 cm thick, equipped at one end with frequent rough notches to prevent slipping in the hand. When throwing, the club was held in a horizontal position; when thrown, it came into a rotational "motion, which one author compares with the flight of a boomerang. But the Tasmanians did not know a real boomerang.

The Tasmanian weaving technique is characterized as spiral-roll. The samples of baskets available in the British Museum are very similar to those in Australia. Along with wicker baskets and bags, there are much more primitive ones: from bark, leaves, algae.

The dwellings of the Tasmanians were often the simplest barriers from the wind, but huts were also built in the form of a hemisphere or cone, with a frame of poles covered with bark and branches.

The boats of the Tasmanians were peculiar. They were a cross between a raft and a boat and were made from large pieces of bark of different types of eucalyptus, rolled into a tube, nested one inside the other and wrapped with grass ropes. These tubes were connected in three “places, the middle one is longer (4.5 m), the outer ones are shorter. Such a vessel, reminiscent of the "balsa" (reed raft) of the Indian tribes of South America, lifted up to six people; it was set in motion with the help of sticks 2.5-3 m long; at low water, these sticks were used as hooks, at high water - like oars, rowing while standing or sitting on bundles of grass.

Kangaroo skins served as clothing for the Tasmanians: women wore them in the form of aprons, the sick and the elderly - as raincoats to protect themselves from the cold. But often, even in the cold season, the Tasmanians went completely naked.

Of the three methods of making fire known on the Australian mainland: drilling, plowing (the so-called “fire plow”) and sawing, the Tasmanians knew the first two. Drilling was the predominant method. They tried to keep the fire, and during their movements, women always took smoldering torches from the bark with them. The Tasmanians had a very low technique for processing edible supplies: they did not have grain graters, there was no earthen oven that existed among the Australians; they did not know the art of cooking; they knew only roasting on the fire and baking in the ashes.

The Tasmanians were known for the intoxicating drink. They made deep notches on the trunks Eucalyptus resinifera , which was called the "cider tree" by the colonists, and collected the sweet juice flowing out in abundance in a hole dug at the foot of the tree. The juice quickly thickened, turning into a kind of molasses. The pits were covered with a flat stone to protect them from animals and birds. After some time, the juice began to ferment, it was mixed with water and got an intoxicating drink like cider.

economy

Hunting and gathering played a leading role in the economy of the Tasmanians. Hunted for big

Game (kangaroos) and marine mammals (seals and stranded whales). The Tasmanians did not know any traps; throwing spears and clubs served as the main hunting tool. The usual way of hunting was raids with burning grass and bushes. Women also took part in the hunt, mainly in round-ups as beaters.

Mushrooms, large bulbs, berries, bird eggs, edible algae, molluscs, and larvae were the subjects of the gathering economy. Along with gathering, it is necessary to put the catching of crustaceans and hunting for small animals (opossum, bandicoot).

The Tasmanians did not engage in fishing at all, even on the sea * coast. They did not eat the fish because they were disgusted with it, a fact that is very difficult to explain. Therefore, they did not have any fishing tackle, no hooks, no nets. But they willingly caught and ate various mollusks and other marine animals. Catching them was the specialty of the women, who swam very skillfully and dived after them. It was also women's business> to hunt seals, which they killed with blows of clubs on the head * as they do here in the North.

Regarding the distribution of hunting and gathering products, the sources contain only an indication that the prey of collective hunting was distributed among all participants, and each individual probably also shared the surplus of individual prey with other members of his group, since conservation and storage of products were not known to the Tasmanians.

social order

The social structure of the Tasmanians remained almost “completely unstudied. It is known that they were divided into about twenty tribes, each of which had

lo your dialect. The tribes, in turn, had divisions called in the sources "hordes" or "clans". Apparently, there were no more than fifty people in each division. Furno (Cook's companion) says that he never saw a camp consisting of more than four huts, each of which could accommodate three or four people. O'Connor estimates the size of a group of Tasmanians who roamed together at ten to thirty people. La Billardière recounts q a meeting with a "horde" consisting of 42 people. Elsewhere, the same author mentions a "horde" of 48 people (ten men, 14 women and 24 children).

Each group moved in a certain territory, the boundaries of which were strictly observed. In some places, there was a transition to settling, mainly on the northwestern coast of the island, where the "hordes" remained all year round in the same place, collecting shellfish. However, as a general rule, seasonal movements also took place there: winter was spent in valleys protected from sea winds, and summer - on the seashore.

On the true nature of the divisions of the tribe among the Tasmanians, the sources do not contain accurate data. These divisions were probably primitive genera. According to Milligan, the Tasmanians avoided* intermarriage within their own division and "wives were more often kidnapped or openly taken from neighboring clans." In other words, they had exogamy. The kinship account was apparently matrilineal. At least Bonwick reports that "in Australia and Tasmania, men were considered relatives of their mothers' relatives." A comparison with the Australian order makes this report plausible, because in 1870, when these words were written, in Australia, mainly those tribes were known who actually considered kinship through the female line.

Marriage among the Tasmanians, apparently, was a pair, but along with it, the remains of a group marriage were also preserved. In West we read: “Polygamy was tolerated; lately women have lived in bigamy.” Milligan points to the extreme ease of divorce among the Tasmanians. The widow was considered the property of the whole group: all men had the right to it. Comparing the data of sources, we can come to the conclusion about the predominance of the traditions of group marriage among the Tasmanians.

All sources agree that the Tasmanians did not have real "rains". But some observers saw them as tribal leaders, however, with very limited power (Davis, Breton, Dixon, Jeffreys, Robinson, Walker), while others believed that they were simply heads of individual families (Backhouse, West). Any quarrels were resolved by self-reprisal or by single combat of the warring parties.

Religion

Even less is known about the religious beliefs of the Tasmanians than about the social system. Reports from observers about this are contradictory and not very reliable. Some - like Widowson, Breton, Jorgensen - denied them any religion at all. Others - the majority - recognized the existence of religious beliefs, but described them in very contradictory ways. Almost everyone, however, agrees on one thing: the natives were afraid of the night spirit, or spirits wandering in the dark. Some also indicate the name of this night spirit: Raego Wrapper (Robinson) or Namma (Davis). Others reduce it simply to a superstitious fear of the dark (Line, Walker, West). There is a report about the cult of the moon (Lloyd, Bonwick); in any case, on moonlit nights, the Tasmanians arranged their "corroborees". There are also reports of belief in a day spirit, but they are very vague. Pater W. Schmidt tried to find traces of “primitive monotheism” in these messages, but there are no grounds for this.

The Tasmanians practiced initiation, but we only know about its rites that one of them was scarring on the body. Bonwick mentions the spinning tablets, but only as a tool of magic, and not as part of the rites of initiation; women were forbidden to look at them. With regard to sorcery, it is known that everyone knew and used magical techniques, but in each group there were also persons who were considered especially skillful in magic; the British called them doctors. Magic tricks were simple and very reminiscent of those practiced by the Australians. According to Bonwick, the usual method of treatment was rubbing the diseased area, accompanied by the utterance of spells, and the imaginary extraction of a bone or stone from the patient's body. Backhouse says that the sorcerers kept pieces of glass with them, with which they inflicted deep wounds in the diseased part of the patient's body. Obviously, glass replaced magic crystals, which among the Australians were a necessary accessory for a sorcerer. One of the best remedies for the treatment of diseases was considered to be the application of the bone of a dead man to a sore spot, as well as the particles scraped off from the bone of the deceased and the water in which the bone was soaked were ingested. Milligan says that the Tasmanians often wore a bone of an arm or a leg, or a lower jaw around their neck, and sometimes even the skull of a deceased relative, as an amulet that protects against all sorts of troubles.

Sometimes the sick were placed near the deceased for healing. Backhouse relates that after the death of a woman, her relatives built a platform of poles and, at sunset, laid a corpse on it; then they placed the sick around the platform. According to the natives, the deceased had to get up at night and expel the evil spirits that caused the disease from the sick.

The sources are silent about the methods of harmful magic. Only Brown-Smith mentions that the Tasmanians believed that a person could be harmed by taking possession of his hair. The Tasmanians believed in the spirits of the dead, who during the day hide in caves and rock crevices, tree hollows, secluded valleys, and roam the earth at night. Spirits were believed to be generally benevolent beings, though capable of harming the living when angry.

The afterlife was considered a continuation of the earthly one. There was an idea of ​​the land of the dead, rich in game and berries. The Tasmanians knew three ways of burial: burial in the ground, cremation, sometimes with a preliminary exposure of the corpse on the platform, and burial in caves or tree hollows. Interesting are the "sacred stones" of the Tasmanians, mentioned by Brou-Smith and Backhouse. They provide a wonderful analogy to the Australian churingas and at the same time evoke the famous painted pebbles from Mas d'Azil in France (Mesolithic). Apparently, they served as amulets and talismans. According to Backhouse, the black and red stripes painted on these stones represented "absent friends". More likely, however, is Bonwick's suggestion that this is not about absent living people, but about the dead, who were spoken of as "set off on a long journey."

There are some indications of totemic beliefs. More than once, observers noted various food prohibitions: some Tasmanians refused to eat the meat of a male wallaby, others refused to eat the meat of a female. An interesting story is about a woman who had a superstitious attachment to one of the trees in the forest. When this tree was damaged by a group of men, in anger she threw herself at her offenders with a burning brand 1 . There was a ban on eating fish, but the motives for this ban remain unknown.

Art

Ling-Roth, in his work The Tasmanian Aborigines, questions the existence of the fine arts among the Tasmanians before the arrival of Europeans, since "information about this is insufficient." However, already among early travelers we find references to works of fine art, the origin of which cannot be attributed to European influence. So, Peron (1802) found in the grave he dug out pieces of bark, on which signs were applied, similar to those with which the natives tattoo their forearms. Henry Gellier (source not mentioned by Ling-Roth) found in 1827 on the wall of a hut in Surry Hills a charcoal drawing of the month. Ross (1836) mentions the images of human figures, quadrangles, circles, scrawled on the bark. Calder reports that he found "several extraordinary charcoal drawings" on the walls of the huts. Some of them were conditional, and he could not understand their meaning, others depicted a dog, an emu, people throwing spears at some animal, apparently a kangaroo. "Masterpiece" Calder calls the "battle picture", which depicts fighting, running and dying people.

The arrival of Europeans gave new themes to Tasmanian artists. Thus, in 1828, shortly after the inhabitants of Surry Hills first saw the ox-drawn carts of a caravan of colonists passing through the district, the scene that struck them was reproduced on the wall of one of the huts. There are mentions of drawings on the bark, as well as images on trees and on rocks. In one of his books 2, Bonwick reproduces images of the sun, the moon, people in a boat, drawn by the Tasmanians on tree trunks. Of the rock carvings, he mentions only one, namely, a human hand drawn in red ocher. Until recently, no other rock art has been found in Tasmania. Of great interest, therefore, are the relief images found by A. L. Meston on the rocky cape of Mersey Cliff, on the northwestern coast of the island, not far from the “kitchen heap” at the site of the camp. Some images are conditional (concentric circles, large ovals with smaller ovals inscribed in them), others are realistic, what are the images of a snake curled up in a ring, a bird's head, a shell haliotis (the main food of the inhabitants of this district). Most of the bas-reliefs are characterized by their great depth, which was not easy to achieve due to the hardness of the rock (diabase). According to Meston, the images were carved with a pointed piece of quartzite, which was struck with another stone, like a hammer.

The Tasmanians are also familiar with primitive forms of musical creativity. The melody was marked by parallel thirds. The content of the words of the songs concerned hunting, military clashes, etc. Skins rolled into a tube were used as a percussion instrument; they were pounded on, beating time. The beat was beaten during the performance of dances 3. The dances, apparently, were similar to the Australian corroborees 4 .