GO 



NOTES ON THE LAST LIVING ABOEIGINAL 



OF TASMANIA. 



By James Barnaed, V. P. 



It has been generally supposed that the grave has closed 

 over the remains of the last of the aborigines, and that thq 

 extinction of the race has been final and complete. This 

 supposition, however, is believed to be erroneous ; for there? 

 still exists one female descendant of the former " j)rinces of 

 wastes and lords of deserts " in the person of Fanny Cochrane 

 Smith, of Port Cygnet, and the mother of a large family of 

 six sons and five daughters, all of whom are living. 



Some doubts have been cast in Parliament and elsewhere 

 upon the claim of Fanny (to keep to her pre-nuptial and first 

 Christian name) to be of the pure blood of her personal 

 ancestors, but after searching the records, and upon her own 

 testimony, and from other evidence, there seems to be little 

 reason to doubt the fact. 



It appears, then, that Fanny was born at Flinders Island 

 in 1834 or 1835, and is now about 55 years of age. Sarah 

 was the name of her mother, and Eugene that of Tier father, 

 and both were undeniably aboriginals. Sarah first lived with 

 a sealer, and became the mother of four half-caste children ; 

 and was subsequently married to Eugene (native name, 

 Nicomanie), one of her own people, and had three children, 

 of whom Fanny is the sole survivor and representative of 

 the race. 



Lieut. Matthew Curling Friend, E.N., in a paper read 

 before the Tasmanian Society, on March 10th, 1847, " On the 

 decrease of the Aborigines of Tasmania," in alluding to the 

 curious theory propounded by Count Strzelecki, that the 

 aboriginal mother of a half-caste can never produce a black 

 child should she subsequently marry one of her own race, 

 controverts this notion of invariable sterility by quoting two 

 instances which came under his notice while visiting the 

 aboriginal establishment at Flinders Island. I give his own 

 words : — " One was the case of a black woman named Sarah, 

 who had formerly four half-caste children by a sealer with 

 whom she lived, and has had since her abode at Flinders 

 Island, where she married a man of her own race, three black 

 children, two of whom are still alive. The other, a black 

 woman named Harriet, who had formerly by a white man 

 with whom she lived two half-caste children, and has had 

 since her marriage with a black man a fine healthy black 

 infant, who is still living." 



