
Yagan
Sign in to saveAlso known as Ya-gan
Yagan (; – 11 July 1833) was an Aboriginal Australian warrior from the Noongar people. Yagan was pursued by the local authorities after he killed Erin Entwhistle, a servant of farmer Archibald Butler. It was an act of retaliation after Thomas Smedley, another of Butler's servants, shot at a group of Noongar people stealing potatoes and fowls, killing one of them. The government offered a bounty for Yagan's capture, dead or alive, and a young settler, William Keats, shot and killed him. Yagan is considered a legendary figure by the Noongar.
Person · Open Library
- Works
- 6
Top works
- The teachings of Kebzeh
- I︠A︡ prishel iz-za gor Kavkaza
- Primary Tooth Development in Infancy
- The Abkhazian Book of Longevity and Well-Being
- The Caucasian book of longevity and well-being
via Open Library + Wikidata
Listeners · Last.fm
- Listeners
- 99
- Total plays
- 918
Tags
<a href="https://www.last.fm/music/Yagan">Read more on Last.fm</a>
via Last.fm · Yagan
Key facts
- Person.name
- Yagan thumb|right|Yagan statue, Heirisson Island
via Wikipedia infobox
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- human
- Gender
- male
- Place of birth
- Western Australia
- Place of death
- Perth
- Occupation
- warrior
- Image
- Yagan Statue, Western Australia.jpg
Show 4 more facts
- date of death
- 1833-07-11
- date of birth
- 1795-00-00
- Commons gallery
- Yagan
- Commons category
- Yagan
Sources (2)
via Wikidata · CC0
~35 min read
Encyclopedic overview
22 sectionsContents
- Biography
- Early life
- Marriage and family
- Relations with settlers
- Wanted dead or alive
- Death
- Yagan's head
- Exhibition and burial
- Lobbying for repatriation
- Exhumation
- Repatriation
- Preparations for reburial
- Reburial
- Legacy
- Cultural references
- ''Alas Poor Yagan''
- Statue
- Literature and film
- Other cultural references
- See also
- References
- Sources
Yagan (; – 11 July 1833) was an Aboriginal Australian warrior from the Noongar people. Yagan was pursued by the local authorities after he killed Erin Entwhistle, a servant of farmer Archibald Butler. It was an act of retaliation after Thomas Smedley, another of Butler's servants, shot at a group of Noongar people stealing potatoes and fowls, killing one of them. The government offered a bounty for Yagan's capture, dead or alive, and a young settler, William Keats, shot and killed him. Yagan is considered a legendary figure by the Noongar.
After his shooting, settlers cut off Yagan's head to claim the bounty. Later, an official sent it to London, where it was exhibited as an "anthropological curiosity" and eventually given to a museum in Liverpool. It held the head in storage for more than a century before burying it with other remains in an unmarked grave in Liverpool in 1964. Over the years, the Noongar asked for repatriation of the head, both for religious reasons and because of Yagan's traditional stature. The burial site was identified in 1993; officials exhumed the head four years later and repatriated it to Australia. After years of debate within the Noongar community on the appropriate final resting place, Yagan's head was buried in a traditional ceremony in the Swan Valley in July 2010, 177 years after his death.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Yagan” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.