Also called Kickerterpoller or Black Tom Birch, he spent part of his youth living with the colonists, learning English and being baptised as a Christian.

He was eventually caught and jailed and, with limited options, he agreed to act as a guide for a roving party of armed colonists to capture other Aboriginal Tasmanians or Palawa as they are also known.

Kikatapula was then ordered to accompany George Augustus Robinson on his 'friendly mission' to round up the remaining Indigenous people and exile them to Flinders Island.

[2] British sealers arrived in the region soon after, rapidly obtaining a reputation for brutality and the kidnapping of young Palawa women and girls to be used as their sex slaves.

Birch had significant whaling and sealing interests in eastern Tasmania, having an outpost at Grindstone Bay in the heart of Kikatapula's Paytirami homeland.

[1] In late 1822, an Aboriginal man from New South Wales who had been sent to Van Diemen's Land for resisting British occupation in the Sydney region, camped at Duck Hole Farm.

[1] With their combined grievances against the British, and having a gang of Aboriginal followers which at times numbered over 100 Oyster Bay, Big River and Bruny Island people; Musquito and Kikatapula came to be a significant force against the colonists.

The gang of insurgents then continued raiding farms and killing settlers throughout the southeast and central parts of the island, with Kikatapula being clearly identified as a leader.

[1] In June 1824, the gang were preparing to ransack the homestead at Lovely Banks near Colebrook, when Sarah Birch came out of the house and begged Kikatapula to desist.

Although Governor George Arthur was receptive to their entreaties and ordered some huts to be built at Kangaroo Point to accommodate them, Musquito remained incarcerated and the disappointed Oyster Bay people soon returned to the bush and continued their insurgency.

With the concurrent continued violent expansion of the British into Palawa lands, Kikatapula and other leaders of the resistance stepped up their operations resulting in the conflict becoming even more bloody, evolving into what is known as the Black War.

[3] Kikatapula considered his people who had died at the hands of the British as martyrs and was determined that it was his patriotic duty to inflict injury upon the white man.

Probably because Kikatapula spoke English quite well and had been baptised making him eligible to give evidence under oath at court, Arthur was reluctant to charge him with any crime.

If Kikatapula was placed on trial, he would give sworn statements of the widespread killings of Aboriginal people by the colonists which would embarrass and in turn bring legal charges against those in authority.

In a skirmish with the British in April that possibly killed 30 Palawa, Kikatapula was reported as being shot dead, but this proved false and the raids continued.

This time though, with the hostile intent of the colonists at large being overt and probably assuming he would be shot dead on the streets of Hobart, Kikatapula refused to leave the jail.

[1] Kikatapula was posted to guide the 'roving party' of Gilbert Robertson, the son of a wealthy Scottish plantation owner and his black slave mistress.

This mission was planned to act as conciliatory expedition to make amicable contact with Palawa in the remote western areas of Van Diemen's Land.

[2] Robinson and his mission set out from Hobart in January 1830 with Kikatapula and eleven other Palawa guides to act as envoys in contacting the Indigenous peoples.

[1] In Hobart, Governor Arthur gave permission for Robinson to take his Palawa guides and round-up the last of the Oyster Bay and Big River people still holding out in central and eastern Van Diemen's Land.

[5] With Mannalargenna's aid, the mission found Umarrah and his associates in late August and finally toward the end of the year, they located the last hold-outs of the Oyster Bay / Big River people just north of Lake Echo in the central highlands.

[3] Kikatapula, however, soon rejoined with Robinson in Launceston to undertake a further expedition back to the northwest of Tasmania to gather the few remaining Palawa there and take them to the Wybalenna Aboriginal Establishment on Flinders Island.