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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Blood on the Spear: Aboriginal Killings of Aboriginal People in Colonial Victoria, 1835-1851: Volume Three: Inter se killings and intra-Indigenous vio

Blood on the Spear: Aboriginal Killings of Aboriginal People in Colonial Victoria, 1835-1851: Volume Three: Inter se killings and intra-Indigenous vio

Clark, Ian D.

Paperback

Series: Frontier Violence in Colonial Victoria, 1835-1851, Book 3

Native American History

ISBN13: 9798275317985
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Nov 20 2025
Pages: 504
Weight: 1.91
Height: 1.01 Width: 7.00 Depth: 10.00
Language: English
This is my third major foray into frontier violence in colonial Victoria, spanning the period from the beginning of European settlement in Melbourne in 1835 to the formal separation of the Port Phillip District from New South Wales, and the change of name to Victoria in 1851.

My first foray was concerned with compiling a register of massacres and killings of Aboriginal peoples in western Victoria, which was published in 1995 as Scars in the Landscape: A register of massacre sites in western Victoria, 1803-1859. My second foray was recently completed, when I published a two-volume study of Aboriginal violence against Europeans and other non-Aboriginal people, entitled 'Blood on the Spear: Aboriginal Killings of Non-Aboriginal People in Colonial Victoria, 1835-1851'. Volume One focussed on western Victoria, the Wimmera, and the Mallee, and Volume Two focussed on central and northeast Victoria, and Gippsland.

This present study is concerned with inter se killings, or intra-Aboriginal deaths at the hands of other Aboriginal people. Inter se is a Latin phrase meaning 'between or among themselves' (Oxford Dictionary). Its primary focus is violence within and between Aboriginal communities, however, I have excluded Aboriginal deaths at the hands of the Native Police Corps when they were on official duty - I will discuss these in a separate volume.

The study of intra-Indigenous violence, and in particular incidents that led to fatalities, is instructive as it reveals a colonial legal system grappling with Aboriginal cultural practices and customary law and its impact on colonial legal proceedings. It also highlights the risk of violence that Indigenous people faced from other Indigenous people.

My study has uncovered some 296 inter se deaths alleged to have occurred between 1835 and 1851 from 285 incidents. This sum does not include numerous incidents that do not record the number of deaths, so the figure of 296 is most certainly conservative.

If we accept Richard Broome's estimate of Aboriginal deaths by Europeans, we arrive at the following statistics of frontier violence in colonial Port Phillip, 1835 - 1851:

Aboriginal deaths by Europeans: 700 - 1,000 (Broome)

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Clark, Ian D.

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