SOLOMON ISLANDS MURDER.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1236, 19 September 1911, Page 5

SOLOMON ISLANDS MURDER.

o PRICE ON WHITE MEN'S HEADS. By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright Sydney, September 18. A member o'f the Evangelical Mission, who has returned from tho Solomons, states that the recent murder of the missioner, Mr. Daniels, at Malaita, was not the outcome of his interference with native customs, but because he was a European. A price has been placed upon the heads of whites, and every native is paid for killing them.

Professor MacMillan Brown, who re. turned to Wellington from the Solomon islands on Wednesday- last, stated, in the course of an interview with a Dominion reporter, that Mr. Daniels, the missionary, was; as stated above, murdered because a price had been put on white men's heads. The story related to Trofessor Brown was to the effect that some time before a nalive of Malaita (a mountainous bush-covered island in the Solomon Group) had been killed in an affray with white men. The head of the village to which the man is said to have belonged thereupon offered 370 fathoms .of shell money (equal to about .£75 sterling) for a wliitc head. Thereupon two of the tribe stolo off to tho mission station and shot Mr. Daniels whilst' in tho act of conducting divine service. This murder was committed four months ago. In the course of the same interview, Professor MacMillan Brown stated that though it was still unsafe for whites to venture inland in Malaita, the natives who were recruited for work on tho more civilised island of the group made the best plantation workers.