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 European soldiers and settlers on Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) harassed the
native aborigines and seized valuable hunting lands belonging to them. When
whites attacked and killed some aborigines on a hunting party in 1804, a
protracted "bush war" broke out that greatly reduced the aborigine
population during the next generation. Bushrangers, rural outlaws, robbed and
killed both the whites and the aborigines during the period, causing additional terror
and bloodshed. In 1830, the island's governor, Sir George Arthur
(1784-1854), managed to capture and hang many of the bushrangers but failed to
corral the aborigines with his "Black Line," a cordon of thousands of
settlers sent into the bush to drive the aborigines out (only a boy and a woman
were flushed out). The fighting, however, ended, and by 1835 the remaining
aborigines had been persuaded to resettle on Flinders Island nearby.
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