Christina Smith (missionary)

In the preface she explained she wrote the book out of a strong sense of duty, to record the characteristics, customs, habits, language, and legends of the local people before they disappeared under the force of European colonists.

[3] Smith wrote about a famous bloody massacre where station owner James Brown slaughtered 11 aborigines, including an elderly blind man and girls aged 18 months, 2 years, 12 and 15, but the trial was aborted and he was never held to account.

[4] Fifteen years after the case was dropped Smith published a pamphlet with details of the cruelty:[5] The white men showed no mercy to either the grey-headed old man or to the helpless infant on its mother's breast.

At that day all the evidence required will be brought forth-the Judge will be an impartial one; and those eleven victims, whose bodies the flames consumed, will stand forth and witness against the real criminals, whose doom will be to endure the torments of the eternal fire.She also contributed material in 1881 to the work of anthropologist Alfred William Howitt.

[1][clarification needed] The Lady Nelson Discovery Centre in Mount Gambier uses a hologram image of Christina Smith to explain the story of the region's early contact between settlers and Aboriginal people.