If the stories brought together in this book had been arranged according to a chronological narrative, it would go something like this:

Around the middle of the nineteenth century, Aboriginal people in what would later be called the Victoria River country (Northern Territory) were affected by a new disease, smallpox, which came from the north; many succumbed to its hideous embrace. Possibly, the decimation of some families intensified endemic skirmishing among neighbouring peoples, and deaths created opportunities for territorial expansion and problems of orderly succession to country.