They also found the dead body of a fair-skinned child enclosed in kangaroo skin bags.
Massacre of Aborigines by Europeans.
She was the sole survivor of the disaster and was supposedly the woman Angus McMillan saw with the Aborigines.
Another version of the story maintains that she was the daughter of Commissary Howard.
The search parties left many handkerchiefs with a message written on it.
The message read:
WHITE WOMAN!
There are fourteen armed men, partly White and partly Black, in search of you.
Be cautious; and rush to them when you see them near you.
The white settlement is towards the setting sun.
Despite these efforts, the elusive white woman was never found.
Nor was it conclusively established that she existed at all.
For some two years the Aborigines of the area were hunted for what they were imagined to have done.
According to one estimate, the hunt for the woman left at least fifty Aborigines dead.
Angus McMillan, the originator of the White Woman myth and the perpetrator of several of the Gippsland massacres.
This was thin evidence and not very conclusive.
But there was enough room for doubt, and a second search expedition was organized.
Eventually, they got a leadthe great chief Bungalene had taken the white woman as one of his wives.
The natives had apparently found the figurehead foundering on the sea and retrieved it with great difficulty.
The Aborigines carried it about with them, and held it in great reverence.
An Aborigines camp by the river.
Yet, rumors still persist to this day.
Its enduring presence throughout the 19th and 20th centuries shows its significance in the mythology of white settlers.
