This introductory section, with a cover page and four pages of text, gives an overview of the Aboriginal people of Tasmania from 1772 when a French expedition sited them to 1876, the year of Truganini's death. The author gives the name as Truganana which she notes is the "form consistently used in G.A Robinson's Papers".

Individuals, subject matter and locations include:

• Truganini
  
  
• James Augustus Robinson
  
  
• Lieutenant-Governor Arthur
  
  
• William Lanney
  
  
• John West, "History of Tasmania 1852"
  
  
• Joseph Milligan, "Lanney: a Native of the North-West. Vocabulary compiled by Joseph Milligan: Papers and Proceedings of the Royal Society of Tasmania, 1859"
  
  
• Norman Barnett Tindale (AA 338) : "Growth of a People: Formation and Development of a Hybrid Aboriginal and White Stock on the Islands of Bass Strait. 1948." The Tartangan Culture: "Culture Succession in South-Eastern Austrlalia from Late Pleistocene to the Present. 1957"
  
  
• Joseph Bernard Birdsell (AA 689): "The Racial Origin of the Extinct Tasmanians. 1948"
  
  
• Deportation
  
  
• The Black Line
  
  
• Sealers
  
  
• Bass Strait
  
  
• Circular Bay
  
  
• Circular Head
  
  
• Oyster Cover
  
  
• D' Entrecasteaux Channel
  
  
• Western Bluff on the Upper Mersey