Matthew Moorhouse, South Australian Aboriginal protector, loses control at 1841 Rufus River massacre
Matthew Moorhouse, first official protector of Aboriginals in South Australia (1839-56), and the Rufus River battle as depicted by W.A. Cawthorne.
Images courtesy State Library of South Australia
Matthew Moorhouse, South Australia’s first official protector of Aboriginal people, embodied the paradox of also having led a policing party that massacred 30 to 40 Aboriginals in 1841 at Rufus River near Wentworth at the junction of the Murray and Darling rivers in New South Wales.
The South Australian policing party was sent to Rufus River after the local Maraura people had blocked the overlander route bringing the colony a continuous supply of sheep, cattle, bullock drays and horses. Six months of guerrilla warfare had stemmed from the overlanders having sex with Aboriginal women without giving promised food and clothing. Aboriginal groups retaliated by stealing thousands of sheep (including 5000 from Henry Inman, future first South Australian police commander).
Moorhouse contended the Rufus River killings were provoked by 150 Aboriginals preparing to attack. With clear instructions from South Australian governor George Grey not to use firearms, Moorhouse handed over command to police sub inspector Bernard Shaw when he feared his party was within range of the Marauras' spears. The guns were fired without orders being given.
Moorhouse was also an English doctor appointed as protector by the British parliament. He arrived in 1939 and tried to guard Aboriginal rights and interests to the point of upsetting authorities and the press.
He lived at Pirltawodli, the Native Location on the northern bank of the Torrens river, and worked closely with the Dresden missionaries running the school for Aboriginal children and using the Kaurna language. Moorhouse wrote A Vocabulary and Outline of the Grammatical Structure of the Murray River Language, published in 1846. (Aboriginal people from the Murray River had moved into the Adelaide area after colonial settlement.)
Moorhouse had became the first official Aboriginal protector (Walter Bromley and William Wyatt filled the role part time) after the British colonial office's first choice for the job, George Augustus Robinson, a mediator in Van Diemen's Land's so-called Black Wars, had declined the offer.
South Australia abolished the position of Aboriginal protector in 1856. In that year, Moorhouse went to England, where he lectured on South Australia and promoted migration. He then visited North America, investigated systems of education and travelled widely by railroad. In 1849, Moorhouse had been on the committee looking at the projected South Australian colonial railway.
Moorhouse's links to South Australia resumed and deepened as a member of the House of Assembly for the City of Adelaide (1860-62) including being commissioner of crown lands and immigration in the first George Waterhouse government ministry.
He became a successful northern pastoralist for several years, only practising medicine in emergencies. Moorhouse bought shares in properties near Riverton and Saddleworth but soon sold out and, with Joseph Fisher and others, bought 27,700 acres near the Hummocks. Moorhouse managed the station until Robert Barr Smith bought it in 1870.
