Tarenorerer

Tarenorerer, also known as Walyer, Waloa, or Walloa (1800 – 5 June 1831), was a rebel leader of the Indigenous Australians in Tasmania. Between 1828 and 1830, she led a guerrilla band of indigenous people of both sexes against the British colonists in Tasmania during the Black War.

Early life

Tarenorerer was born in circa 1800 near Emu Bay, Van Diemen's Land as a member of the Tommeginne people.[1] As a teenager, she was taken captive by Indigenous kidnappers and sold as a slave to white colonists in the Bass Strait Islands.[1] During her captivity, she learned to speak English and how to use firearms.[2] Two of her brothers and two of her sisters joined her with the sealers.[1]

Resistance

In 1828, she was able to return to northern Tasmania, where she gathered a guerrilla band of Indigenous warriors of both sexes and lead them against the colonists.[3][4] As she was able to train them in using firearms, they were successful. George Augustus Robinson referred to her as an Amazon[5] and was very concerned about her ability to incite a revolution.[6][7] Tarenorerer escaped to Port Sorell with her brothers Linnetower and Line-ne-like-kayver[1] and two sisters but was captured by sealers and taken to the Hunter Islands.[1] They were then taken to Bird Island to catch seals and mutton birds.[1]

In December 1830 she was taken to Swan Island, where her identity was revealed. Her capture, Robinson said, was 'a matter of considerable importance to the peace and tranquility of those districts where she and her formidable coadjutors had made themselves so conspicuous in their wanton and barbarous aggression'. She was imprisoned at the Gun Carriage (Vansittart) Island, where she fell sick and died of influenza in prison.[8][9]

See also

References
  1. Matson-Green, Vicki maikutena, "Tarenorerer (1800–1831)", Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, retrieved 2019-02-07
  2. "Walyer - The Tasmanian Amazon". Convict Creations. Retrieved 7 February 2019.
  3. "Tarenorerer". The Female Soldier. Retrieved 7 February 2019.
  4. National Museum of Australia (2003), Outlawed! : rebels, revolutionaries and bushrangers, National Museum of Australia, ISBN 978-1-876944-23-0
  5. Carstairs, Irene. "Damn, Girl -Tarenorerer, the Amazon of Van Diemen's Land". That History Nerd. Retrieved 7 February 2019.
  6. "Walyer 1". University of Tasmania. Retrieved 7 February 2019.
  7. Robinson, George Augustus; Plomley, N. J. B. (Norman James Brian) (2008), Friendly mission : the Tasmanian journals and papers of George Augustus Robinson, 1829-1834 (2nd ed.), Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery ; Hobart : Quintus, ISBN 978-0-9775572-2-6
  8. McFarlane, I (2005), Walyer, Centre for Tasmanian Historical Studies, retrieved 7 February 2019
  9. Kilner, Kerry (2014). "Tasmanian hauntings". Island. 137: 38–39. ISSN 1035-3127.

Further reading
  • N. J. B. Plomley, Friendly Mission (Hobart, 1966)
  • D. Lowe, Forgotten Rebels (Melbourne, 1994)
  • Felton, Heather (1991), Adapting and resisting, Department of Education and the Arts, Tasmania, ISBN 978-0-7246-1812-5, book 6 of Living with the Land
  • Ryan, Lyndall (1996), The Aboriginal Tasmanians (2nd ed.), Allen & Unwin, ISBN 978-1-86373-965-8
  • Papers and Proceedings, Tasmanian Historical Research Association, vol 5, no 4, 1957, p 73, and vol 23, no 2, June 1976, p 26.
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