Sand and Stone – Pigeon
by Kevin Moran (With a Foreword by Peter Conole)
ISBN 978-0-85905-448-5, (2011, New), 126pp, illustrated, 360grams
$30.00* + POST
This is Pigeon's story and of those who suffered his reign of terror and the men who hunted him.
It is without academe historians' fashionable fabrications and elaborations, which in recent times have dissembled the past to rewrite history as they would like it, not as it was. They attack any historical writing that questions their spurious promotion of utopian aboriginal culture. They will not welcome this work.
The truth may destroy the legend of Pigeon, but importantly it will show the pioneers of this furthest frontier
were mainly decent young men who survived against the odds and were of immense courage and fortitude. It is a true story of a legend that belongs to the pioneer police, but was stolen from them by the falsity of Pigeon's myth makers.
Pigeon's cowardice is shown by the callous murder of Constable Richardson in his sleep; in the shooting of the stockmen Burke and Gibbs in the back, and his involvement in the spearing and shooting of Tom Jasper in the head as he slept.
Pigeon, through the barrel of a gun, tyrannised his own people, defied tribal laws and the old men and seized what women he wanted and when on the run he and his gang resorted to cannibalisation of their own people. He fled his after ammunition was spent and escaped tribal punishment twice.
In the end white man's justice prevailed.