The South Australian colonist was established by George Fife Angas to promote immigration to South Australia. The newspaper's editor was John Stephens, later editor/owner of the South Australian register. John Stephens had earlier been editor of the Christian advocate newspaper in London, which at the time was the voice of the anti-slavery movement. When Stephens and his second wife came to Adelaide in 1843, he founded the Adelaide observer newspaper. The South Australian colonist consisted largely of anonymous letters from happy and successful colonists, printed as 'extracts from settlers letters'. When copies of the newspaper arrived in Adelaide, the authors were reputedly embarassed to see their work in print. Besides reprinting the settlers' letters, the South Australian colonist also set out to dispute the (published) comments of London detractors of South Australia. So the newspaper was very much a propaganda vehicle, but apparently an expensive one, as it ceased after only a few months and was replaced by the less expensive and longer running South Australian news. Letters published in the Colonist included those written by influential individuals such as Charles Sturt, Pastor August Kavel, the missionary C.W. Schurmann, and Charles Flaxman. A major interest was the plight of the Aboriginal people. Long reports of the meetings of the London-based Aborigines' Protection Society were published in its pages. There were many articles referring to the customs of Aboriginal peoples, the progress of the Lutheran missionaries working among them, and even reference to language information collected by amateur anthropologist and government storekeeper William Williams.