Collectors bought, stole and traded Wadawurrung artefacts which trivialised their cultural significance and helped Europeans confirm their theories of the “primitive savage”.
Collecting scientific curiosities such as stuffed animals, rocks, birds’ eggs, or Aboriginal tools and weapons was considered a healthy hobby for a gentleman in the 1800s. Reynell E. Johns was one of many who collected scores of Aboriginal artefacts from Central and South Western Victoria. Johns even went so far as to dig up burial mounds to steal Aboriginal ancestral remains for his collection… While much of this collecting was undertaken in the name of science, it did more harm than good.
Collectors who bought, stole and traded Aboriginal artefacts trivialised and belittled their cultural significance and helped 19th century Europeans confirm their ideas about the “primitive savage”; as an inferior human subspecies.
The Gold Museum holds the 19th century collection of Dr Sidney Pern, which contains Aboriginal artefacts from Australia, the Torres Strait Islands and the Pacific. Due to the haphazard way these artefacts were collected, we will never know where many originated, or understand their intended use. This is a problem for many museums that wish to return artefacts like these to their traditional owners.
“The hunting and fighting artefacts of indigenous peoples were by far the most popular items for collectors’ cabinets and trophies, whereas artefacts of women’s subsistence activities and camp maintenance were rarely gathered.”
Professor Tom Griffiths from the Australian National University, expert in Australia’s cultural and environmental history, 1996.
This shield has long been part of a museum collection in Northern Ireland. This demonstrates just how desirable items like this were to 19th century collectors all over the world.
Shield made by Wadawurrung People, Victoria about 1836. Reproduced courtesy of the National Museums Northern Ireland.
In February, 1865, (in)famous collector Reynell E. Johns wrote in his diary: “… after a short search we found the aboriginal graves we came to open and at once set to work with pick and shovel by the bright moonlight. The graves were on top of a sort of down, from which the plains sloped away on both sides, their surface of white grass studded with black groves of she-oak. It was a weird-looking scene, and the group at work at the graves was equally wild. The first we uncovered was ‘Barney’ but he was not the one we sought. However we took his skull, which was a good one, and then opened another grave where we found the skeleton we wanted – that of ‘Peeler’, an ex-native policeman. We took his skull which was better than Barney’s and closed both graves.”
“The hunting and fighting artefacts of indigenous peoples were by far the most popular items for collectors’ cabinets and trophies, whereas artefacts of women’s subsistence activities and camp maintenance were rarely gathered.” Professor Tom Griffiths from the Australian National University, expert in Australia’s cultural and environmental history, 1996.
“At last, after fourteen days’ riding, the sheep were found a hundred and forty miles from our station… they saw them in a hollow, surrounded by about a hundred natives… The party rode down among them, and a singular scene met their view: the ground was strewed with heads of sheep and bits of mutton, and some of the sheep were as well cut up as if done by an English butcher: the skins were pegged out on the ground, and the fat collected in little twine bags, which the women make of the bark of a tree. Fifty live sheep were enclosed within a brush fence (James said it was the best brush fence he had seen in the country), but they were very thin, the natives being too lazy to take them out to feed; they were killing and eating them up as fast as they could. The gentlemen lighted a good fire by which to watch the sheep all night; but they durst not sit within the glare of it, for fear of the natives taking aim at them, as they knew they were among the rocks, and very likely watching them, although they did not show themselves. The party slept little that night; they cooked and ate some of the mutton; and the little native boy they had to track for them, although in great fear of the other natives, devoured nearly a whole leg. They started early next morning driving the sheep before them, and loaded with spears, tomahawks, waddies, and baskets, which they had taken from the natives.” Katherine Kirkland, an early settler who lived just outside Ballarat in the 1830s-1840s.
“Reynell E. Johns (1834-1910), who lived for a time in Ballarat and later in the surrounding region, owned the largest known collection of south-eastern Australian Koori artefacts- mostly well-used hunting implements. He tried to donate his collection in 1868 to the Avoca Shire Council in order to move, but they refused. The Ballaarat East Public Library sought it, as had already been promised the “large and unique collection of native weapons and implements” from Andrew Porteous, protector of Aborigines at Carngham (near Burrumbeet). Johns’ collection ended up in the Beechworth Burke Museum. Some of these artefacts were displayed at the World Exhibition in 1867 and again in 1878 (both in Paris), and they confirmed immature ideas that aboriginal Australians were “relic savages”. Professor Tom Griffiths from the Australian National University, expert in Australia’s cultural and environmental history, 1996.
PLAY THE AUDIO: Curiosity collector Reynell E. Johns, February, 1865.
PLAY THE VIDEO: Ballarat Gold Museum Curator Snjezana Cosic speaks about 19th century curiosity collecting.
While not Wadawurrung technologies (they are in fact Dja Dja Wurrung), this collection and its display is typical of the period. Many collectors in the 19th century didn’t keep records of where and when they collected such artefacts, which makes reclaiming and studying them in modern times difficult.
J. H. Kerr, Aboriginal spears, boomerangs and implements, c. 1865. Reproduced with permission from the State Library of Victoria
In this staged photograph of Queen Mary dressed in a possum-skin cloak, she is holding Wadawurrung technologies of both men and women. This illustrates the fascination non-Aboriginal People had for such items. It was taken by a photographer who made money selling souvenir booklets featuring Aboriginal People.
F. Kruger, Queen Mary Ballarat, c. 1877. Reproduced with permission of the Ballarat Historical Society.
Links:
The history of scientific racism
An article on Australian Aboriginal people in P.T. Barnum’s famous circus
