[The following is in regards to roving bands of militia who patrolled in search of bands of Tasmanian Aborigines and often attacked them without any evidence that the natives had had any part in violence against British settlers. The following takes place during the late 1820s.]
Typically, a member of one roving party recorded an occasion when a group of Tasmanians was found cooking round a fire. The soldiers surrounded them, opened fire and rushed in with fixed bayonets to finish off any wounded. One infant found by its dying mother was bayoneted and pitched straight into the flames. Another individual openly boasted of having pushed an old Tasmanian woman into her own fire and having watched her roast to death.
Source:
Cocker, Mark. “The Black War.” Rivers of Blood, Rivers of Gold: Europe's Conquest of Indigenous Peoples. Grove Press, 2001. 148. Print.
Original Source Listed:
Davies, The Last of the Tasmanians, pp. 64-6.
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