George Briggs

George Briggs , an English convict in Van Diemen's Land, was a sealer in Bass Strait known for having children with at least one Aboriginal woman, Woretemoeteyenner, apparently with the consent of her father, the chief Lamanbunganah.

Background

James Kelly, the circumnavigator of Tasmania, was connected with sealing. He wrote an account of the voyage some time after 1821, in which he says: "The custom of the sealers in the straits was that every man should have from two to five of these native women for their own use and benefit, and to select any of them they thought proper to cohabit with as their wives; and a large number of children had been born in consequence of these unions—a fine active hardy race. The males were good boatmen, kangaroo hunters, and sealers; the women extraordinarily clever assistants to them. They were generally very good looking, and of a light copper colour."

Life

In the course of his narrative, Kelly frequently refers to a sealer of the name of George Briggs, originally from Bedfordshire, England. George Briggs was one of Kelly's shipmen during the circumnavigation. Kelly states that Briggs could speak the language of the North-East Coast tribes fluently. He was an able man, who in 1816 had two native women, one a daughter of the chief Lamanbunganah, and five mixed race children.

One of Briggs's native concubines has been identified as Woretemoeteyenner (–1847), also called Watamutina, Pung, and Bung, a daughter of the North-East chieftain Mannarlargenna who arranged for his daughter to cohabit with Briggs. She bore Briggs five known children, including an infant girl (killed near Launceston in 1811; Aborigines threw the baby into a campfire), and Dolly Dalrymple.