Matriarchs of Survival

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Discussion

I have used palawa kani names for places alongside their English names ¹. palawa kani words are not capitalised by convention.

Introduction

The ‘Matriarchs of Survival’ are three of the approximately nine Tasmanian Aboriginal women who survived colonisation to have grandchildren ². These matriarchs are the progenitors of the entire Tasmanian Aboriginal (palawa) population today ³. All palawa people are descendants of these women, and are from one of three groups: families from the Furneaux Islands; families from Oyster Cove; and descendants of Dolly Dalrymple Briggs from the Latrobe area ⁴. The known matriarchs were Woretemoeteryenner (recorded as Margaret), Fanny Cochrane Smith, Nimarana, Emmerenna, Judy (or Julia) Mansell, Sarah, and ‘Jumbo’. The names of the other three women are unknown ⁵.

Mannalargenna

One of the Furneaux Islands matriarchs was Woretemoeteryenner, the daughter of Mannalargenna ⁶. Mannalargenna was born in roughly 1775 and died on the 4^th December 1835 ⁷. He was the chief of his people, the pairrebeenne (also known as trawlwoolway or panpekanner) clan of the Coastal Plains nation ⁸. In 1830, during George Augustus Robinson’s rounding up of palawa who had evaded capture, Mannalargenna joined Robinson in return for his people’s displacement to be temporary. However, eventually Robinson sent him to captivity on Flinders Island, where he died less than three months later ⁹. Almost all of the approximately 250 palawa imprisoned on Flinders Island were unable to return to their homelands ¹⁰.

Flinders Island

Flinders Island was established as a sealing island in the late 1790s ¹¹. Many of the sealers, men mostly from England, had relations with the palawa women there. While some were no doubt loving relationships, many palawa were abducted and forced to live with the sealers. The descendants of these relationships make up the majority of the modern palawa population ¹². From 1833 to 1847, Robinson ran a settlement on Flinders Island, called Wybalenna. The settlement was supposed to ‘civilise’ and Christianise the palawa peoples, as well as letting the colonial population have full reign of mainland Tasmania ¹³. Instead it slowly killed them, and in 1847 only 44 of the 250 palawa captives remained ¹⁴.

Woretemoeteryenner

Woretemoeteryenner, born around 1797, lived on her homelands until she was relocated to Wybalenna. She entered a relationship, either willingly or forcibly, with sealer George Briggs around 1810 ¹⁵. She had five known children: Dolly, Eliza, Mary (or Margaret), John, and a daughter who died as an infant ¹⁶. In the 1820s, Briggs sold Woretemoeteryenner to another sealer, John Thomas, for the sum of one guinea ¹⁷. Woretemoeteryenner died on 12^th October 1847 at Perth, Tasmania¹⁸. An inquest was recorded the next day, noting that she died of natural causes ¹⁹.

Dolly Dalrymple Briggs

Dolly Dalrymple Briggs was born in 1812, and married convict Thomas Johnstone on 29^th October 1831 ²⁰. As a child she was fostered by surgeon Jacob Mountgarrett at Port Dalrymple, the name of which her foster mother gave her when she was baptised on 18^th March 1814 ²¹. Dolly and Johnstone had around 11 or 13 children, and lived in the Latrobe area ²². In 1841 she petitioned the colonial office for permission for her mother to leave Wybalenna and live with her, of which she was successful ²³.

Fanny Cochrane Smith

Fanny Cochrane Smith was born in 1834 at Wybalenna. Her mother was Tanganuturra, and her father was an unknown white man. In December 1842 she was sent to the Queen’s Orphan School in Hobart to learn domestic service skills ²⁴. She returned to Wybalenna as catechist Robert Clark’s servant, whom she had lived with as a young child, and who treated her brutally ²⁵. On the 27^th October 1854 she married ex-convict William Smith, and had 11 children with him ²⁶. In 1899 and 1903 she recorded the only recordings of pre-colonial palawa songs and language, which are held in the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery ²⁷. She died on the 24^th February 1905 ²⁸.

Footnotes

1. Tasmanian Aboriginal Corporation, pulingina to lutruwita (Tasmania) Place Names Map, 2019. ↩
2. Greg Lehman, ‘Matriarchs of Survival’, in Alison Alexander (ed.), The Companion to Tasmanian History, University of Tasmania, Hobart, 2006, n.p.. ↩
3. Lehman, ‘Matriarchs of Survival’. ↩
4. Lyndall Ryan, The Aboriginal Tasmanians, 2nd edn., Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, 1996, p. 10. ↩
5. Frank Ellis (ed.), Records of the Queen Victoria Museum Launceston, no. 1-10, The Museum Committee Launceston City Council, Launceston, 1952-1959, p. 12. ↩
6. Maggie Walter, ‘Woretemoeteryenner’, in Alison Alexander (ed.), The Companion to Tasmanian History, University of Tasmania, Hobart, 2006, n.p.. ↩
7. University of Tasmania, ‘Mannalargenna’, Telling Places in Country [research project], n.d.. ↩
8. Maggie Walter, ‘Who are the Palawa People’ [video lecture], HSS113: Indigenous Lifeworlds: Sovereignty, Justice, Society, Lecture 4: Society and Culture: Palawa Contemporary Ways of Being, 29^th July 2022. ↩
9. Alison Alexander, ‘Mannalargenner’, in Alison Alexander (ed.), The Companion to Tasmanian History, University of Tasmania, Hobart, 2006. ↩
10. Steve Thomas (director), John Moore (producer), and Beth McRay (executive producer), Black Man’s Houses [documentary], Open Channel Co-operative Ltd., Tasmania, 1993. ↩
11. Rebe Taylor, ‘Savages or Saviours? — The Australian sealers and aboriginal Tasmanian survival’, Journal of Australian Studies, 2000, 24(66):73-84, p. 74. ↩
12. Lehman, ‘Matriarchs of Survival’. ↩
13. Maggie Walter and Louise Daniels, ‘Personalising the History Wars: Woretemoeteryenner’s Story’, International Journal of Critical Indigenous Studies, 2008, 1(1):35-44, p. 39. ↩
14. Thomas, Moore and McRay, Black Man’s Houses. ↩
15. Walter and Daniels, ‘Woretemoeteryenner’s Story’, p. 37. ↩
16. Ibid., p. 38. ↩
17. Ibid., p. 37. ↩
18. Death registration of Margaret Briggs, died 12 October 1847, Births, Deaths and Marriages, Tasmania, NAME_INDEXES:1193853. ↩
19. Death inquest of Margaret Briggs, 13 October 1847, Libraries Tasmania, NAME_INDEXES:1355849. ↩
20. Marriage certificate, Dalrymple Briggs and Thomas Johnson, 29 October 1831, Longford, Libraries Tasmania, NAME_INDEXES:819578. ↩
21. Ian McFarlane, ‘Dalrymple, Dolly (1808-1864)’, in Christopher Cunneen, Jill Roe, Beverley Kingston and Stephen Garton (eds.), Australian Dictionary of Bibliography: Supplement 1580-1980, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 2005. ↩
22. Bill Mollison and Coral Everitt, ‘The Briggs Genealogy’, in Phil Hackett (ed.), The Tasmanian Aborigines and their descendants (Chronology, Genealogy and Social Data) Part 2, University of Tasmania, Hobart, 1978. ↩
23. Letter from Dolly Dalrymple Johnstone to colonial office, n.d., Archives of Tasmania, CO280/133:171-171a. ↩
24. J. Clark, ‘Smith, Fanny Cochrane (1834–1905)’, in Geoffrey Serle (ed.), Australian Dictionary of Bibliography: Volume 11 1891-1939, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1988. ↩
25. Lehman, ‘Matriarchs of Survival’. ↩
26. Marriage certificate, Fanny Cochrane and William Smith, 27 October 1854, Hobart, NAME_INDEXES:852332, Libraries Tasmania. ↩
27. Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, ‘Tasmanian Heritage on UNESCO Register’, What’s On [blog], 2017. ↩
28. Death registration of Fanny Cochrane Smith, died 24 February 1905, Births, Deaths and Marriages, Tasmania, NAME_INDEXES:1986963 (index only; no image currently available). ↩

References

Primary

Death inquest of Margaret Briggs, 13 October 1847, Libraries Tasmania, NAME_INDEXES:1355849.

Death registration of Fanny Cochrane Smith, died 24 February 1905, Births, Deaths and Marriages, Tasmania, NAME_INDEXES:1986963 (index only; no image currently available).

Death registration of Margaret Briggs, died 12 October 1847, Births, Deaths and Marriages, Tasmania, NAME_INDEXES:1193853.

Letter from Dolly Dalrymple Johnstone to colonial office, n.d., Archives of Tasmania, CO280/133:171-171a.

Marriage certificate, Dalrymple Briggs and Thomas Johnson, 29 October 1831, Longford, Libraries Tasmania, NAME_INDEXES:819578.

Marriage certificate, Fanny Cochrane and William Smith, 27 October 1854, Hobart, NAME_INDEXES:852332, Libraries Tasmania.

Secondary

Clark, J., ‘Smith, Fanny Cochrane (1834–1905)’, in Geoffrey Serle (ed.), Australian Dictionary of Bibliography: Volume 11 1891-1939, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1988.

Ellis, Frank (ed.), Records of the Queen Victoria Museum Launceston, no. 1-10, The Museum Committee Launceston City Council, Launceston, 1952-1959.

Lehman, Greg, ‘Matriarchs of Survival’, in Alison Alexander (ed.), The Companion to Tasmanian History, University of Tasmania, Hobart, 2006.

McFarlane, Ian, ‘Dalrymple, Dolly (1808-1864)’, in Christopher Cunneen, Jill Roe, Beverley Kingston and Stephen Garton (eds.), Australian Dictionary of Bibliography: Supplement 1580-1980, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 2005.

Mollison, Bill and Everitt, Coral, ‘The Briggs Genealogy’, in Phil Hackett (ed.), The Tasmanian Aborigines and their descendants (Chronology, Genealogy and Social Data) Part 2, University of Tasmania, Hobart, 1978.

Ryan, Lyndall, The Aboriginal Tasmanians, 2nd edn., Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, 1996.

Tasmanian Aboriginal Corporation, pulingina to lutruwita (Tasmania) Place Names Map, 2019.

Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, ‘Tasmanian Heritage on UNESCO Register’, What’s On [blog], 2017.

Taylor, Rebe, ‘Savages or Saviours? — The Australian sealers and aboriginal Tasmanian survival’, Journal of Australian Studies, 2000, 24(66):73-84.

Thomas, Steve (director), Moore, John (producer), and McRay, Beth (executive producer), Black Man’s Houses [documentary], Open Channel Co-operative Ltd., Tasmania, 1993.

University of Tasmania, ‘Mannalargenna’, Telling Places in Country [research project], n.d..

Walter, Maggie, ‘Who are the Palawa People’ [video lecture], HSS113: Indigenous Lifeworlds: Sovereignty, Justice, Society, Lecture 4: Society and Culture: Palawa Contemporary Ways of Being, 29th July 2022.

Walter, Maggie, ‘Woetemoeteryenner’, in Alison Alexander (ed.), The Companion to Tasmanian History, University of Tasmania, Hobart, 2006.

Walter, Maggie, and Daniels, Louise, ‘Personalising the History Wars: Woretemoeteryenner’s Story’, International Journal of Critical Indigenous Studies, 2008, 1(1):35-44.