Dundalli

Traditionally described as a murderer, savage and terrorist, he is now thought variously to have been a guerrilla leader or to have coordinated a decade-long resistance to British colonization the area.

The two missionaries in question were J. P. Niqué and A. T. W. Hartenstein who, with several others,[c] had trekked north from Brisbane as part of a lay mission recruited by John Dunmore Lang to work in the Moreton Bay area.

Connors dates to this period the transformation of the Djindubari from generous hosts to wandering or displaced Europeans who found themselves in their midst, to jealous guardians of their prerogatives as owners of the resources of their island.

[37] According to Libby Connors, these rumours are to be interpreted in terms of the important role he assumed in adjudicating rituals where traditional aboriginal law, especially concerned with the application of the principle of talion or retribution for an injury suffered, was applied after agreement had been reached through wide intertribal negotiations.

Connors speculates that he may have thought tribal justice had secured peace at the December corroboree, which the Djindubari won, while stopping the feud when one of their own men was killed.

He had not exacted revenge for his brother's death, had challenged Strange fairly, and had saved Mrs Cash, facts suggesting he had adopted a conciliatory policy of moderation.

[39] The trial was presided over by Roger Therry, who had been assistant prosecutor in the Myall Creek massacre, and who had gone on record affirming at the bench the rights of Aboriginals to justice.

[43] He noticed Petrie in the crowd and addressed an appeal to him in his native tongue, and, sighting aboriginals, including his wife, on the farther hill, called out to them, telling them that Wumbungur had been responsible for his capture, and requested that they kill him.

[24] In a memoir Therry described Dundalli as 'a man of the most savage ferocity, his crime of the deepest dye' and as evincing 'a sad and pitiful inferiority to the European mind'.