E.L. Hamilton becomes the South Australian protector in 1881 with Aboriginals viewed as inferior doomed race
Aboriginal men on a pastoral property or mission in northern South Australia in 1925. They may have come for rations, as they have tin cans.
mage courtesy of the State Library of South Australia
E.L. Hamilton, the clerk in the South Australian government Aborigines Office in Adelaide, was promoted to sub protector in 1873 and to the first protector of Aboriginals since 1856 in 1881. He remained poorly paid without resources, reflecting the government's lack of interest in Aboriginal matters with the missions now providing the limited care and education – away from what Port Mcleay teacher and missionary George Taplin called “the contaminating and demoralising influence of the vile practices carried on at the wurleys”.
Politicians and civil servants inferred – amplified by the newspapers – that Aboriginals as an inferior doomed race were dying out. A generation of western district Aboriginals had been decimated by diphtheria, whooping could and measles after 1860.
In the 1870s, Aboriginal people continually asked the government for land to sustain themselves. Non-Aboriginal people in country areas also complained about the lack of rations for Aboriginal people who, in many cases, were starving.
But in 1881, when the abolition of the Aborigines Office was being proposed, Lance Corporal Clode of Venus Bay in the western district reported seeing 700 Aboriginal people near Lake Gardiner.
The South Australian government's lack of an Aboriginal police was criticised by journalist J.D. Woods who edited an 1879 government publication The native tribes of South Australia, sent with artefacts from the South Australian Museum to the Sydney International Exhibition.
Woods was challenged by George Taplin of the Aborigines Friends Association's Port McLeay mission – the only one financially supported by the government. E.L. Hamilton also responded to Woods criticism over not preserving Aboriginal "manners and customs". Hamilton also pointed out that there were 50 depots and five mission stations issuing relief to Aboriginal people.
Some of these depots were staffed by the employees of pastoralists who had disinherited the Aboriginal people of their land and income.
