Truganini (1812-1876) was generally regarded as the last Aboriginal person of Tasmania at the time of her death. However, evidence indicates that other Aboriginal Tasmanians outlived her. For example, a woman named Fanny Cochrane Smith, whose mother and probable father were Aboriginal Tasmanians, died near Cygnet, Tasmania, 29 years after Truganini’s death. Today, most people do not refer to anyone as the last Aboriginal person of Tasmania. The culture and identity of the Aboriginal peoples of Tasmania survived on the islands of Bass Strait among a community descended from Tasmanian Aboriginal women and European sealers. The Aboriginal Tasmanian identity has been preserved to the present day.
Truganini was the daughter of Mangerner, a leader of the Recherche Bay people. She grew up on Bruny Island. By the time she was 17 years old, she had seen her mother stabbed to death, her sisters captured by sealers, and her intended husband killed by woodcutters.
In 1829, Truganini met George Robinson, a British-born lay preacher who supported the rights of the Aboriginal peoples of Tasmania. Robinson, Truganini, and some other Aboriginal people traveled around Tasmania collecting the remaining Aboriginal people from their lands. By 1834, the remaining Aboriginal Tasmanians, including Truganini and about 200 others, settled on Flinders Island, at the Wybalenna settlement. There they were to be “civilized” and Christianized.
In 1839, Truganini left Wybalenna with Robinson, in theory to help him make peace with the Aboriginal people in Victoria. There she escaped, and, with four other Tasmanians, attacked some European whalers, killing two men. Two of her companions were hanged. Truganini was sent back to Wybalenna in 1842. By 1847, she had become one of only 47 survivors of the settlement. The government later decided to transfer the Aboriginal people to Oyster Cove, part of Truganini’s tribal lands. It is said that she often swam across the D’Entrecasteaux Channel to visit Bruny Island and, together with another Indigenous Tasmanian named William Lanne, would visit Fanny Cochrane Smith’s family in Nicholls Rivulet, near Cygnet. Truganini was a close friend of Fanny’s, and she took Fanny’s children out on hunting trips, teaching them her skills.
Truganini died in Hobart, Tasmania, on May 8, 1876. Despite the fact that she was terrified of being mutilated and begged to be buried far away, the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery in Hobart displayed her skeleton for many years. Truganini’s bones were returned to members of the Tasmanian Aboriginal community in 1976. She was cremated, and her ashes were scattered over the D’Entrecasteaux Channel.
