White colonies of Tasmanians

The first permanent white colony in Tasmania was established in 1803; the first episode of The Black War occurred in 1804 when whites attacked a group of Tasmanians without cause. The whites did not treat them as human beings, invaded their hunting grounds, cut off their food sources, attacked the women, and killed the men. The Tasmanians tried to fight back, but were unable to overcome the white man's superiority in arms and manpower, and between 1831 and 1835, about 200 survivors were relocated to Flinders Island in order to avoid total extermination and achieve reconciliation. The destruction of their social organization and traditional way of life, along with the intrusion of foreign diseases and their 'enlightenment', quickly led to their extinction. A Tasmanian woman, Truganini (died 1876), who helped resettle on Flinders Island, was the last purebred Aboriginal. Another Tasmanian woman is said to have lived on Kangaroo Island in South Australia until 1888.