MASSACRE OF MISSIONARIES.

Timaru Herald, Volume LXXXI, Issue 12477, 14 September 1904, Page 3

MASSACRE OF MISSIONARIES.

«, : . AN EXPLANATION. CERTAIN NATIVE GRIEVANCES. ' United Press Association—Per Electric Telegraph—Copyright. BRISBANE, September 13. Father Liuekins, head of the Catholic. Mission at Herbertshohe, who arrived in the German steamer, denies the statement that. Tomari threatened vengeance because he was flogged by order of the missionaries for putting away a native wife and taking another. He attributes the trouble largely to the fact that the slave-holding propensities of the coast natives have been interfered with. They are more virile than the bush natives, whom they captured and compelled to work in the plantations. The missionaries, with the assistance of the German authorities, secured the liberation of these slaves, and settled them in villages near the mission. The freed slaves had been given land and allowed to marry and make homes. The feeling .against the whites was not confined to one district, but was general. The natives objected to their lands being taken, and a special cause, of complaint, was. the. practice cf flogging the natives for various offences. The Government officer did the flogging. The work .of the missionaries, he thinks, will only suffer a temporary interruption. A cable had already been sent to Germany to replace the workers massacred'. As soon as the punishment of the murderers was completed the mission station would again, be occupied. He states that the natives, of the mission, took no part in the massacre. Some tried to defend the missionaries, but failing to do so. gave the alarm. Father Vandeva arrived shortly after the murders, and the murderers threatened him with axes. ,The following day he took the native police to see the work of punishment begun. Father Liuekins declares that the natives are undoubtedly cannibals, though they made no-attempt to eat the bodies of the missionaries.