Yagan: A Different Kind of Hero 1833

Front Cover
Focus Education Services, 2016 - Aboriginal Australians - 53 pages
Yagan Square in Central Perth recognises Yagan, the son of Midgegooroo, the leader of the Beeliar tribe, a territory on the southern side of the Canning River and within the greater metropolitan area. He was born about 1800 but remembered only for his brief interaction with the British settlers who began taking up land at the Swan River in 1829. Yagan's recorded history is limited to the years 1831 to 1833 yet since then, as seen in the bibliography filling the last pages of this booklet, he has generated more books, articles and letters to the Press than any other Indigenous Australian of the 19th Century. In the final months of his life he was described as the Wallace of his Age, a reference to the Scottish Patriot whose head was displayed in London. Yagan was shot for a reward by a boy who welcomed as a friend and the preserved head was taken to England in 1834. The second part of this booklet covers the 20th century search for Yagan's skull and its discovery and triumphant return to Western Australia. --Back cover.

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