Criteria for selection

The Russian explorers observed that Bungaree was one of a number of Aboriginal people who the colonial government had attempted to manipulate into positions of dominance over the wider Aboriginal community.

They observed that the colonial government bypassed leadership choices made by the Aboriginal communities and selected their own preferred leaders. The government then conferred the distinction of a gorget on their chosen leaders, making the title official.

The main criteria for selection were the person’s loyalty and usefulness to the colonists:

They live in societies of 30, 40, 50 or more persons, and are ruled by their own elders. Nowadays the English Government itself selects the elders and gives them a special mark to that effect consisting of a copper plate on which their rank is indicated, and which they wear round the neck. [1]

The elders of the native groups are distinguished by copper signs with an inscription giving their name and the place where they mostly reside; these they wear by a copper chain at their chest. The elders are sometimes useful to the government in cases of pursuit of, or searches for, escaped convicts. The government gives them boats for fishing and to facilitate their movements across water. ... Until the coming of the English their government was patriarchal, each community was ruled by the senior man. But various English Governors have thought fit to select the chiefs themselves. The dignity and the division of the above-mentioned sign worn round the neck are bestowed on those who show most attachment to the English. ... Such arrangements have been introduced in order to accustom the natives to submission and, through them, to learn of escaped convicts. In this respect they are extremely useful, for they act as guides to military detachments or the police. [2]

Traditionally, Aboriginal societies did not have kings or chiefs in the sense used by English-speaking people. However, elderly and senior initiated men were held in high esteem and physically, spiritually or intellectually superior men were also able to command significant respect. Men of high esteem were looked to by the community for advice and leadership in public matters.

Respected men

When the colonists searched for leaders among the Aboriginal people, in order to find influential allies, they saw in those respected men the qualities they recognised as the badges of leadership in their own society. Some colonists recognised that in spite of the respect and influence those men commanded they were not regarded as solo leaders while other colonists made the simple equation and labelled the men ‘chiefs’ or ‘kings’.

Even the sceptics used the useful label ‘chief’ to describe the men they formed alliances with in order to promote them within both the Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal communities.

William Romaine Govett gave a typical early 19th-century assessment of Aboriginal social hierarchy:

Each tribe has a chief; but whether he possesses his authority from hereditary right, or is chosen, as being the most active and strong, the most valorous or warlike, or from any particular achievement, is not known. It may be observed, however, that they are in general the finest men; and though they are not distinguished from the rest in outward appearance or clothing, they alone have the privilege of having two wives. ... Every tribe possesses its own peculiar territory, and they appear to be very jealous of any invasion of their boundaries, which is often the cause of warfare between one tribe and another ... the chief exercises his authority in various ways: he has the power to disperse the tribe, to order their movements, and appoint the time when, and place where, they are all to assemble again. Sometimes the men hold a council of war, — for I have seen the oldest of them, to the number of thirty, sitting round in a circle (apart from the women and youths), talking apparently very seriously, as if they had heard a report of the approach of a hostile tribe, or some other cause of fear; and, after an hour’s deliberation, the whole tribe has separated in parties of six or four, but the chief remaining with the women. These parties appear to act as piquets on the look out, observing, and at the same time can easily communicate with one another. In this manner they remain away for several days, nor do I think that they assemble again until the regular time appointed by the chief. [3]

In ‘the district named Tarlo’, near the Wollondilly River [4], Govett and ‘another gentleman’ had heard that a ‘tribe’ of Aboriginal people was in the neighbourhood and they decided to visit them at night. They ‘went from one fire to another in order to observe the particular actions and employments of the several groups or families.

The chief was sitting cross-legged between his two wives, and smoking a short black pipe. He was naked, with the exception of the belt around his waist; upon which was inscribed his name, &c., and he appeared, as the light of the fire was reflected upon him, a strong and muscular man’. [5]

Louisa Meredith, who spent time in the Bathurst district in the early 1840s, observed that Aboriginal people respected and gave special consideration to elderly or physically powerful men:

The natives pay great respect to old age; that, and valour, comprising the only distinctions of rank allowed among them. The best fighting man is the chief or head of his tribe, and in case of his death, the next best takes his place, and inherits his wives. The other warriors and the old men form a sort of council, which is convened as occasion demands, when peace, war, and all other points of importance are discussed and decided upon. [6]

In the early 1840s Leon Ducharme, a Canadian who spent four years in New South Wales as a political prisoner, observed that gorget-wearing kings were a common sight. Interestingly, he commented that the gorget was a continuation of a traditional sign of leadership.

However, he said nothing more on this and no further information has been found. He may have been referring to body scars made during the stages of traditional initiation into manhood and its senior levels: