It is thought that, before the advent of
white colonisation, the Nauo had a more northern boundary extension from the
Gawler Ranges to
Port Augusta. They were pressed to move further south by the time white settlement began, as the
Barngarla's relocation brought pressure to bear on them from the north. At the same time, devastation came in from the south with the establishment of
sealing stations along their southern coastal frontiers, whose men, together with escapees from
Tasmanian prisons, kidnapped many Nauo women, beginning with raids from their bases on
Kangaroo Island in the first decades of the 19th century. The violence of these early encounters may explain the hostility of the Nauo to later settlers. The
Waterloo Bay Massacre, near Elliston, which is said to have taken place around 1846, is still a contentious historical issue. Tindale summarised the rumour as follows: Following the killing of a shepherd named Hamp, and the wife of another immediately afterward, it is claimed that 160 well-armed men drove a large group of aborigines, said to have numbered 260, over a cliff into the sea. According to this entirely unconfirmed report, only two aborigines survived. Whatever the truth, some Nauo were still in that area years afterwards. As late as 2017, agreement between the successor
Wirangu community and the Elliston municipal council on the terms to be used to describe what happened were still stalled, with representatives of the latter stating that "massacre" was too strong a word to describe what has been traditionally called the "Elliston incident", where "something happened" but the details are unknown. In May 2018, a group of seven Nauo
elders, along with two local
anthropologists, presented a talk on the Aboriginal history of the Coffin Bay area at the Coffin Bay Yacht Club. Elder Jody Miller thought it was possibly the first time in South Australia that a
Native Title claim group had been asked by a local non-
Indigenous community to share their culture and
songlines. ==Language==