In 1838 a child known as Mathinna was removed from the settlement for the remnant of the Tasmanian Aboriginal people on Flinders Island and taken to Hobart to live in the house of the lieutenant governor. Sir John and Lady Franklin, the historical record recounts, were impressed by her intelligence and wanted to bring her up as a companion to their own daughter. However, when they were recalled to Britain five years later, Mathinna was left behind. Initially sent to the Orphan School, she was later returned to live amongst her people and reputedly died at a young age while under the influence of alcohol. Mathinna has been memorialized in art, dance, literature, and children's books primarily as the tragic victim of a failed experiment in the contest between savagery and civilization, but hers is also a story of adoption that encompasses within it much of what would bedevil attempts to adopt Indigenous children in Australia over the next 150 years. (Contains 63 notes.)