In 1814, a young black man known as Musquito arrived in Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania). He was an Aboriginal warrior from Broken Bay in New South Wales. The authorities had blamed for inciting black resistance to white colonisation, and banished him to Norfolk Island. From there he was sent to Tasmania and assigned as ticket-of-leave stockman to a white settler.

In 1817, Lieutenant Governor Sorrell pressed ‘black trackers’ into the hunt for famous bushranger Michael Howe. In return for tracking Howe down, Musquito was promised freedom and a return home. The authorities broke the promise.

Musquito responded by acts of rebellion which became more and more overt. For a time he became a leader of detribalised Aborigines in the settled areas; later he led Aboriginal fighters against settlers.

Until about 1820, it was still possible for Aboriginal clans to survive alongside the white settlers, but then capitalism began to radically transform Tasmania. Hungry British textile mills demanded wool. Tasmania’s sheep population began rising steeply, the number of white settlers increased from 2000 in 1817 to 13,000 in 1824, and they drove Aborigines off the land.

There was no room for Aboriginal culture within a rapacious capitalism, for they had a communal culture. didn’t‘Their system of socialism’, lamented a Queensland clergyman, hindered ‘any improvement or rightful ownership.’ Neither did they accept social hiearchy, A Victorian clergyman complained it was ‘difficult to get into a blackfellow’s head that one man is higher than another’

The Oyster bay tribe resisted, attacking shepherds’ huts and settlers’ houses. Musquito emerged to lead them. In the following years, resistance fighters attacked dozens of huts and houses.

They began to demonstrate a knowledge of European technology. In an 1823 raid, Musquito’s group waited till the whites had discharged their muskets. Then, knowing the empty muskets were useless until reloaded, they charged and overwhelmed the settlers.

Whites responded to these cleverly planned and disciplined attacks by insisting a white man must be leading them. Or if not, then surely all the attacks must be under Musquito’s leadership. Colonial society became desperate to capture him. In 1824 Governor George Arthur put a price on his head.

In fact the Tasmanian clans had many leaders. One was dubbed Black Jack. Another, Walyer of the Emu Bay tribe, ‘was said to stand on a hill and give orders to the Aborigines’.^. When banished to Penguin Island she tried to kill her captors en route. Finally she was sent to the ‘Friendly Mission’ on Swan Island, where she again tried to organise a revolt.

They tracked Musquito down near Grindstone Bay. He was unarmed and alone but still the whites shot him in the groin. He recovered from his injuries, only to face a rigged trial alongside Black Jack. The authorities accused him of aiding and abetting the murder of settler William Holyoak, offering no evidence except his presence in a crowd of 60 or 70. He had no lawyer to help him with the bewildering complexities of foreign law.

They hanged Musquito, but that didn’t calm the settlers’ genocidal fury. In fact he remained a pretext. Four years later, Arthur wrote to justify the continuing extermination of black Tasmanians:

"I regret that the natives led on by a Sydney black, and by two Aborigines of this island, men partially civilized (a circumstance which augurs ill for any endeavour to instruct these abject beings) have committed many murders [which] have so inflamed the passions of the settlers … that further forbearance would be totally indefensible."

What was really indefensible was capitalism’s genocidal war on indigenous Australians. We should celebrate Musqito’s resistance to it.