Fanny Cochrane Smith

Fanny Cochrane Smith ( * December 1834 in Wybalenna on Flinders Iceland, † February 24, 1905 in Cygnet, Tasmania ) was the last of the " pure-bred " Tasmanierinnen, an Aborigine. Since two songs were engraved by her on wax cylinders, they left to posterity the only remaining playing a Tasmanian indigenous language.

Early years in Wybalenna

Her parents were among the last about 220 surviving Aborigines, who were deported to April 1834 using the Black War and the so-called Black Line in Tasmania by the British colonizers after Wybalenna of the Flinders Iceland. Your mother's name was Tanganutura and her father Nicermenic. They were deported by George Augustus Robinson on Flinders Iceland. 1842 she was enrolled at Queen Orphan School in Hobart. She lived in Hobart at the catechists Robert Clark, who held it at an alarming poverty, neglect and brutality. As she worked with twelve years at Clark, she received 2 pounds and 10 shillings a year.

Life at the Oyster Cove

As Wybalenna 1847 closed, came Fanny Cochrane and her family in a group of 47 surviving Aborigines of Wybalenna to Oyster Cove in the south of Hobart, where her father died in 1849. There she lived with her children in a simple wooden house. They built their food to themselves and had an income through the sale of wood, which they beat and brought them to the 50 km distant Hobart. Later she lived in an area of ​​121 hectares, the awarding her the Tasmanian Parliament, and hunted, gathered bush foods and medicinal herbs, wove container, dipped for shells and used traditions of the Tasmanians.

She married in 1854 the Englishman William Smith.

She joined the Methodist church and was very respected by the white community. She died of pneumonia, and after her death, there was a discussion about whether they showed to the public or was the last pure-bred Tasmanian Aborigine. As showed to the public died in 1876, was called Cochrane Smith as a load Tasmania ( last Tasmanian ).

Offspring than Tasmanians

A majority of today's Aborigines of Tasmania are descendants of Fanny Cochrane Smith, who had 11 children with her husband. You and Dolly Dalrymple, who brought 13 children into the world, are considered by the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre as the crucial relationship line of the Tasmanians living today.

Songs and language of the Tasmanians

Cochrane Smith is well known the fact that they sang songs of Tasmanians in 1899 and 1903, which were engraved in wax cylinders. These are the only surviving renditions of an indigenous Tasmanian language. The recordings are now in the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery ( TMAG ) in Hobart on Tasmania.

The songs of Fanny Cochrane Smith were reproduced in 1988 by the Australian folk singer Bruce Watson in the song The Man and the Woman and the Edison Phonograph ( The man and the woman and the phonograph by Edison ). The grandfather of Watson, Horace, initiated the playback of their songs, and there is a photograph of Fanny Cochrane Smith and Horace Watson in a collection at the National Museum of Australia.