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Updated: June 2, 2025
"I will state a remarkable instance of this: The officers of the Beagle took away with them a native of the name of Miago, who remained absent with them for several months. The next time I saw him was at Swan River, where he had been left on the return of the Beagle. He was then again a savage, almost naked, painted all over, and had been concerned in several murders.
A general disturbance would have taken place had not I and several other Europeans come up at the same moment and pacified Miago, whilst Bennyyowlee took advantage of this temporary calm to evacuate the field, followed by insulting shouts of laughter from Miago's friends. A circumstance strongly illustrating the peculiar family customs of this people occurred this evening.
As I passed them they endeavoured to impress upon my mind that one wife was enough for Miago, and that if he surrendered the other to Bennyyowlee they would assist him against the Murraymen. I however resolved not to interfere in the business, and thus telling them I bent my steps to the other encampment.
Poor Kaiber alone lay crouching by my fire, occasionally feeding it with fresh fuel and chanting to himself these two songs, in his own language: Thither, mother oh, I return again, Thither oh, I return again. The other had been sung by the mother of Miago, a native who had accompanied Captain Wickham in the Beagle from the Swan River, and it had made a great impression on the natives.
After a lengthened survey of the sound, the BEAGLE returned to Port George the Fourth, where she arrived on the 7th of April, from whence they made a boat excursion to Collier Bay. Many natives were seen on the shore, evidently wanting to be friendly. On board the BEAGLE, the party had a native of Swan River Miago.
"Miago, when he was landed, had amongst the white people none who would be truly friends of his, they would give him scraps from their table, but the very outcasts of the whites would not have treated him as an equal, they had no sympathy with him, he could not have married a white woman, he had no certain means of subsistence open to him, he never could have been either a husband or a father, if he had lived apart from his own people; where, amongst the whites, was he to find one who would have filled for him the place of his black mother, whom he is much attached to? what white man would have been his brother? what white woman his sister?
Miago ought, according to custom, to have allowed three full days to elapse before his brother's widows entered his hut, but as Bennyyowlee appeared resolved not to renounce his intention of claiming the hand of one of the ladies Miago's friends thought it more prudent to bring matters to a speedy issue, lest, in the interim, his rival might carry of Mugawit, the young lady he was desirous of possessing.
They then built a hut for Miago and lighted a fire; the old mother herself swept out the hut, so as to make it perfectly clean and nice; the brides then laid down in it, one on each side, so as to leave a vacant place in the centre for their new lord and master; and Miago's mother, having seen all these arrangements completed, returned once more to the hut of her husband.
There had not been any previously felt; but in latitude 30 degrees South and longitude 110 degrees East, two days before the north-wester, it set two knots to the northward; another instance of how entirely the currents are governed by the winds off this coast. Our Swan River native had not obtained so much information of his wild countrymen to the northward as Miago.
It appears that some two or three months before this period Weenat, a native of the upper part of the Swan, had stolen a cloak belonging to Miago, Mulligo's brother, and had, according to their belief, from malicious motives given this cloak to one of the native sorcerers, or boyl-yas, who by this means acquired some mysterious power over either Miago or his brother, but selected the latter for his victim, when he fell and broke his back.
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