The Kuku Yalanji eventually were reduced to living in shanty towns on the outskirts of the areas which the foreign populations developed, and developed skills for working in the new economy. Often, in trading their services with the Chinese, they were paid in opium, which could be imported legally until 1906. According to contemporary European observers appointed as protectors of Aborigines, such as Walter Roth and Archibald Meston, consumption of this drug in the form of opium ash mixed with water, accounted for thousands of native deaths, far more than those due to other introduced maladies such as venereal disease. Modern historians now consider that these early reports, like the often bruited tales of the Kuku Yalanji hunting Chinese for cannibalistic feasting, whatever partial truth they contain, perhaps functioned to assuage any guilt European settlers may have felt for their key role in the decimation of northern Queensland aboriginal communities.