Massacre at Hornet Bank aftermath (1)
After the Yiman massacre of the Fraser family at Hornet Bank in October 1857, three large scale reprisal massacres were carried out. The first was carried out by a posse of 12 settlers known as 'The Browns', who tracked down Yiman people across the Upper Dawson Valley and shot down 80 of them. The posse included Ernest Davies, 'Arthur (or John) McArthur, George Serocold, Peter Piggot, Thomas Murray-Prior, Alfred Thomas... a man named Olton and two Aboriginal trackers from Brisbane, known as Billy Hayes and Freddy' (Richards, 2008, p 63). Historian Jonathan Richards quotes from a letter Serocold wrote to his brother in England: "Whatever you do be careful as I do not wish anybody to be able to read what I have written ...Twelve of us turned out and taking rations with us, we patrolled the country for 100 miles round for three weeks and spared none of the grownup blacks which we could find" (Richards, 2008, p 64). Settler George Lang, in a letter to a relative Gideon Scott Lang, said that local squatters and their 'confidential overseers' shot 'upwards of eighty men, women and children' (Lang, 1858).
Notes:
CorroborationRating: ***
LanguageGroup: Yiman
Victims: Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander People
VictimsDead: 80
CorroborationRating: ***
LanguageGroup: Yiman
Victims: Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander People
VictimsDead: 80
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Sources
Event mentions
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Massacre at Hornet Bank aftermath (1)1 Nov 1857 – 23 Nov 1857 — Hornet Bank aftermath (1) — massacreAfter the Yiman massacre of the Fraser family at Hornet Bank in October 1857, three large scale reprisal massacres were carried out. The first was carried out by a posse of 12 settlers known as 'The Browns', who tracked down Yiman people across the Upper Dawson Valley and shot down 80 of them. The posse included Ernest Davies, 'Arthur (or John) McArthur, George Serocold, Peter Piggot, Thomas Murray-Prior, Alfred Thomas... a man named Olton and two Aboriginal trackers from Brisbane, known as Billy Hayes and Freddy' (Richards, 2008, p 63). Historian Jonathan Richards quotes from a letter Serocold wrote to his brother in England: "Whatever you do be careful as I do not wish anybody to be able to read what I have written ...Twelve of us turned out and taking rations with us, we patrolled the country for 100 miles round for three weeks and spared none of the grownup blacks which we could find" (Richards, 2008, p 64). Settler George Lang, in a letter to a relative Gideon Scott Lang, said that local squatters and their 'confidential overseers' shot 'upwards of eighty men, women and children' (Lang, 1858).