 Twenty years earlier a smallpox epidemic from the east is said to have decimated so many members of the tribe that they had to leave the bodies unburied.With the passage of the "Northern Territory Aboriginals Act 1910", the Chief Protector of Aborigines in the Northern Territory was appointed guardian of all Aboriginal and "half-caste" children until their maturity at 18.The authorities were thus empowered to keep in, or remove from, any Aboriginal reserve, any young person, regardless of their parents' or relatives' wishes.