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white ways. On more than one occasion, he accompanied Kelly to the city of Perth. He worked as a police tracker
and courier and it is mentioned that twice he saved Kelly’s life.
For these reasons his subsequent turn to outlawry presented a paradox. It surprised the whites of the district
who regarded him as a ‘civilised station boy’ returned to ‘savagery’. Most of what is known about Major’s life
centres upon his brief period as a bandit and his consequent death in a shoot-out with a police patrol.
In the chief oral version of his tale the turning point came when Major was flogged by Kelly while blindfolded,
the punishment at first attributed to a policeman named Jock Miller. Miller than took Major in chains to Wyndham.
Later he gave him his freedom and sent him back to Texas Downs armed with a rifle to assure his safe conduct.
Perhaps because he held a grudge toward Kelly, Miller told Major of the subterfuge taken over his flogging and
Major set out with revenge in mind.
The tale at this point is taken up by the written accounts. At one of the Texas Downs outstations near Growler’s
Gully, Major shot and killed a white man named Scotty McDonald. Soon after in the same area he put to death two
other white men, Davis (or Davidson) and Fettle. Major was said to have been accompanied by other Aborigines,
including two named Nipper and Dibbie (Debbie). They retreated into the rugged hill country of the Mistake Creek
area and a police punitive expedition soon followed composed of men from Wyndham, Turkey Creek, Hall’s Creek
and Timber Creek.
Major’s stronghold was described as a rock shelter commanding a view of the terrain in most directions.
Access to it was by means of a ladder only. From this place, he and his companions harassed travellers and stock
workers. They were at large for about three months, from July to September of 1908, dating from McDonald’s
death. It is likely that the group underwent privations, though the surmise that a young child was eaten must be
taken with caution. Bones found by the pursuit party may not have been human. If they were human, death may
have been brought about by starvation. On the other hand, ritual cannibalism at the death of a close relative cannot
be ruled out entirely, for there are some personal testimonies to this effect for other cases among east Kimberley
Aborigines.
In the oral version, Major was by then dispirited. He had a presentiment of his approaching death and sought
to return to his homeland toward Darwin. To do this he had to leave the relative safety of the hill country, and it
was near a landmark called Red Butte that the punitive expedition picked up their tracks. The police followed them
throughout the next day to a place called Wild Dog and came up with them at the Nine Mile.
What followed is recorded graphically in the official report written by Constable Fanning, who led the punitive
expedition. Open pursuit began. Rifle fire was exchanged between the two parties and Major, Dibbie and Nipper
split up and were shot to death separately by different members of the pursuit party. An Aboriginal tracker named
Quart Pot followed and killed Dibbie. Another Aboriginal tracker called Dilly shot Nipper. It is not clear who fired
the round that ended Major’s life, whether Fanning or one of his assistants. Major was at first wounded in one hand,
but he was successful for a time in holding back his attackers from behind an ant hill because his wife assisted him
by reloading his rifle. Eventually she was wounded in a breast. One version tells that she died, another that she was
taken to a station where she lived to old age. Major, at this point in the oral narrative, attempted to give himself
up. He stepped out with his hands raised and was shot summarily once or twice in the body before being given the
coup de grace in the head as he lay wounded. His hand was then severed and taken back as a trophy. In Fanning’s
report, he was shot in the head while running, crouching and returning fire.
The foregoing appear to be the most salient events in Major’s life of which we know. It is likely that by the time
of his death he was between 18 and 24 years old, a married man. His abduction as a young boy and the ill treatment
he received at Kelly’s hands were relatively usual practices in colonial Australia. Clearly he had Aboriginal family
ties, was not entirely a waif from the bush when Kelly took him up. For Kelly’s part, Victorian notions about
child-raising allowed for greater violence than is acceptable today—‘spare the rod... ’ etc—to which was added
the race hatred of colonial times and the sentiment that a ‘savage’ might only be ‘civilised’ by a firm hand and
when young.
Considering this background of personal abuse and the colonial temper of the day it is not surprising that
Major, and indeed most other Aborigines, harboured enmity toward Europeans both in general and in particular
instances. One version of his tale observed that Major’s anger was directed towards Jack Kelly and that ironically
he was never able to realise the revenge he sought. Yet, this specificity is belied by the fact that he did succeed in
killing other whites and created some panic in the district. Durack wrote perceptively that, ‘The natives said he
meant to wipe out all the white men in the Country and become a great king,’ adding that this might have become a
reality had his resistance been better organised, for the whites were relatively few in number and lived in scattered
settlements.
At the same time, undeniably personal motives were present. In the version reported by Moore, the first man
killed by Major was said to have laced the flour left in his camp with strychnine. If this was true, it is very likely
that Major felt justified in putting such a man, Scotty McDonald, to death. And Durack suggested that a jealous
wife of Major’s deliberately sowed dissension by telling Major that Kelly was out to shoot him.
There are no ready means of assessing easily the reliability of the different versions of Major’s story but this is
not essential to an understanding of the man and his times. Clearly, the oral versions present perspectives as well
as explicit events differently from those reported and written by whites. It would be surprising if this was not the
case. And there are particulars which ring true for every account as much as there are discrepancies. For example,
the Aboriginal narrative which noted that Major’s hand was taken as a trophy pinpointed a practice common
among whites when dealing with Aboriginal recalcitrants, though head-taking is more frequently cited for other
areas. From the European standpoint, the whites read the signs of Aboriginal resistance accurately enough and they
responded accordingly.