When the land hungry Europeans encroach further and deeper into the Hawkesbury Valley, resistance to their presence begins. Mainly in response to the wanton killing of Aborigines, Aboriginal people pilfer crops, plunder and raze farms to the ground. A frontier war exists. Troops are sent into the valley to subdue those Aborigines who fight to defend their land and families: spears against rifles is a complete mismatch. Prior to 1800, twenty-six white people are claimed to have been killed by Aborigines on the banks of the Hawkesbury. Evidence is not available concerning the number of Aborigines killed or the ways many were destroyed. In 1816, a resident of the Hawkesbury, Prosper Tuckerman, tells his son that a company of troops sent from Sydney on a punitive expedition kill “not less than 400 blacks” in the Hawkesbury Valley .(Brooks 1st edit, 11-12).