'Kings' in brass crescents. defining aboriginal labour patterns in colonial queensland

Arthur J. Vogan's work, aided by ongoing controversy over the activities of the Native Mounted Police and a lurid book-cover, depicting an Aboriginal woman being flogged by a native trooper reached a wide contemporary audience. The buying and selling of Aboriginal children in frontier Queensland was instanced as 'the custom of the place', while adult blacks were depicted as 'the poor wretches one sees forced to work by brutal squatters, carriers, "cockatoo" settlers, and others'. Sporadic though persistent Aboriginal resistance took its continuing toll upon colonists and livestock and Sutherland's account is peppered with incidents detailing trouble with 'niggers'. The kidnapping and abduction of Aboriginal men, women and children - the forcible dismemberment of clan groups - were common features of Queensland's colonial race relations. Kidnapping was so common in Worth Queensland as to 'create no comment and no surprise' noted the Queensland Figaro in 1884, 'There is nothing extraordinary in it'