Truganini was born around 1812 on Bruny Island, a stretch of land off the southeastern coast of Tasmania, then known as Van Diemen’s Land. Her father, Mangana, served as chief of the Bruny tribe, a group of Indigenous Tasmanians who spoke the now-extinct Nunoni language. In that language, her name came from the word for grey saltbush. She grew up immersed in her people’s traditional culture, but tragedy struck early.
As a young girl, she is believed to have witnessed whalers stab her mother to death for refusing to go with them. During her early teenage years, she watched as Nunoni women were taken from camp and traded for goods like tea and sugar. For years, sealers and whalers had ravaged the Tasmanian coast, but the arrival of European settlers brought an end to her way of life altogether. Europeans had first sighted the island in 1642, when the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman came upon it, but it was not until 1803 that significant numbers of British settlers began arriving.
Over the following months, violent clashes erupted between the newcomers and the Indigenous population, which numbered anywhere from three to five thousand people. In February 1804, David Collins, the founding lieutenant governor, established the town of Hobart. He received word from London that acts of violence against Aboriginal people by Europeans were to be punished, but he failed to publish those instructions, a decision that carried dire consequences. As more settlers arrived, many of them convicts transported to the penal colony, violence between the two sides intensified.
In the first twenty years of settlement, Indigenous tribes launched at least fifty-seven attacks on settlers. By 1820, a Russian explorer observed that the natives lived in a state of perpetual hostility against the Europeans. The motives on each side differed. Native attacks were driven largely by revenge for European atrocities, including kidnapping, the forced sexual abuse of Aboriginal women and girls, and the murder of Aboriginal men.
The arrival of settlers had also diminished the island’s game, leaving some native Tasmanians to plunder settler homes out of hunger. European violence, meanwhile, stemmed from revenge, killing for sport, suppression of the native threat, and sexual desire, the last fueled by the fact that male colonists outnumbered females by roughly six to one. In 1823, George Arthur was appointed lieutenant governor. Throughout the decade, he introduced measures to protect settlers from Aboriginal attacks, but they proved ineffective as the death toll continued to climb.
Arthur expressed deep regret over the conflict, believing it could have been avoided if the first settlers had signed a treaty with the natives. By this point, Truganini had lost nearly everyone she loved. Her mother had died years before, her first fiancé had been murdered by timber cutters while saving her from abduction, and two of her sisters had been taken by sealers and sold into slavery. Despite the ongoing violence, there were attempts to establish friendly relations.
In 1829, George Augustus Robinson launched what he called a friendly mission, intending to protect the native people. He began by distributing rations, and his motives were thought to be genuine at first. But he soon made a series of unfulfilled promises to persuade many of the natives to surrender, eventually resettling them at a camp on Flinders Island, far from European settlements. The campaign began on Bruny Island among Truganini’s people, whose interactions with Europeans had been less hostile than elsewhere.
In 1829, Truganini married a man named Woorrady, and in January 1830 she left Bruny Island with Robinson. For the next five years, she served as his guide and translator, teaching him local customs and language while Robinson recorded the journey in his journal. Robinson used fear as a tool, warning the natives that continued fighting would result in their total annihilation. He also promised they would be allowed to return to the mainland, a promise that was untrue.
With Truganini’s help, driven by her desire to protect her people, he encouraged other groups of native Tasmanians to move to Flinders Island, where escape was considered impossible. The isolation was meant to protect them, but in the years that followed, many died from diseases the settlers had inadvertently brought. Violence continued despite the friendly policy, so in August 1830 Arthur secured approval for a declaration of martial law, granting legal immunity to settlers who killed native people. This was accompanied by a military offensive known as the Black Line, intended to drive the Indigenous population from the settled districts and confine them to the Tasman Peninsula.
Bounties were offered for anyone who captured or killed Indigenous Tasmanians. Over the next few years, settlers took over the island, and by the time the conflict, later known as the Black War, was over, the native population had been reduced to around one hundred people. In 1839, Truganini, her husband, and other native Tasmanians accompanied Robinson to Port Phillip in Australia, where he had been appointed protector of the Aboriginals. At some point during this time, reports indicate she gave birth to a baby girl named Louisa Esme, but she was separated from her daughter, who was raised by the Kulin nation.
Truganini later left Robinson and her husband behind, joining a smaller group of Aboriginals who lived as outlaws. Together they robbed and attacked settlers near Dandenong, and local police soon began tracking them. Truganini led the group as they made their way to the Bass River and then to Cape Patterson. The end came when members of the group killed a pair of whalers.
Not long after, the group was captured, tried, and sentenced for the murders at Port Phillip. Two of the men were hanged. Truganini herself suffered a shot to the head and was treated by Dr. Hugh Anderson.
The surviving Tasmanian natives were then returned to their supposed sanctuary on Flinders Island. Truganini’s husband was on the same boat back to Tasmania, but he did not survive the journey. After years in isolation, in 1856 the remaining group of Tasmanians was moved to a settlement at Oyster Cove, south of Hobart. There, Truganini was able to live much as she had in her early years.
She enjoyed diving for shellfish, hunting in the nearby bush, and visiting Bruny Island every spring. In 1861, The Times published an article titled “Decay of Race,” quoting a report from the colonial office on the number of survivors. It stated that fourteen adult Aboriginals of Tasmania remained, the sole surviving remnant of the ten tribes. Among them were four married couples, but no children had been born to them for years.
The article also noted that the survivors at Oyster Cove were allowed to go on hunting trips if they asked, and that all of them were fed, housed, and clothed at public expense. Most were generally healthy but much addicted to drinking. While at Oyster Cove, Truganini met William Lanne, known as the last full-blooded Aboriginal Tasmanian man, despite being around twenty-three years younger than her. He died on March 3, 1869, aged just thirty-four.
As time passed, the few remaining survivors began to die from natural causes and disease. By 1873, Truganini was the only person from the Oyster Cove group still alive, and she was moved to Hobart. Around sixty years old, she sat for many photographers eager to capture the last Tasmanian before the end of her life. Truganini asked colonial authorities that her ashes be scattered in the D’Entrecasteaux Channel, the body of water separating Bruny Island from the rest of Tasmania.
She made this request because William Lanne’s body had not received a proper burial, instead being preserved for scientific purposes. She died on May 8, 1876, aged around sixty-three, in Hobart. She was buried at the Cascades Female Factory, a former workhouse for female convicts just outside the city. Her petition was not carried out.
Just two years after her burial, her skeleton was exhumed by the Royal Society of Tasmania and placed on display. Almost a hundred years after her death, in April 1976, her dying wish was finally fulfilled when her remains were cremated and scattered in the D’Entrecasteaux Channel. Truganini is often considered the last full-blooded speaker of a Tasmanian language, but this is not accurate. She was simply the most famous of her people.
Reports tell of other native Tasmanians who outlived her, living on Kangaroo Island, Flinders Island, and Lady Barron Island. Many consider the last full-blooded Tasmanian to be Fanny Cochrane Smith, who even recorded songs in her native language, though some speculated she was actually of European heritage.