MURDER OF A MISSIONARY AND HIS WIFE AT ERBOMANGA:

Wellington Independent, Volume XVI, Issue 1614, 3 September 1861, Page 5

MURDER OF A MISSIONARY AND HIS WIFE AT ERBOMANGA:

The following are the full particulars of the circumstances attending the deaths of Mr. and Mrs. Gordon, mentioned in our last, the letter was communicated to the Sydney Herald, by the Rev. Cuthberston there, ' Erromanga, 7th June, 1861. Rev. Wm. Cuthbertson. Rev. Sir— lt is with feelings of deep melancholy that I now have to communicate to you the distressing intelligence of the massacre by the natives ; hereof our worthy missionary and hia wife^Mr. and Mrs. Gordon. This mournful event took plaoe on the 20th ult., about one o'clock in the afternoon, and I proceed : to detail you the circumstances connected with.it. On the afternoon of the 20th I waa in the act of writing a note to Mr. Gordon, when I was startled by .a native (David-uti), followed by others of the Misßion boys, rushing across the river and shouting that the Bunkhill natives had killed the " Missi," I immediately armed myself, and the few foreign natives which I have, and started in pursuit of the murderers, but unsuccessfully. I found the bodies of Mr. and Mrs. Gordon lying on the ground horribly mangled, and I saw at a glance that anything in tho shape of surgical assistance was out of the question, a3, from the nature of the wounds, death must have been instantaneous. I went and locked up the Mission-house, and set a guard of ten natives, well armed, to defend the ' property. I then went and selected a spot for the j grave : it is situated on the right bank of the river, » near the spot where Williams was killed, and overshadowed by cocoanut and banana trees. In the morning I made two coffins, in which the bodies were placed, and a,t two o'clock we earned them

b_i_^_MMaw— Hi_i—a— —MMV . . „. to the burying-place. There, at my request,' a native named " Mana," who had been for soma time at the Satnoan Institution, and who acted as a teacher under Mr. Gordon, conducted the services. A hymn having been sung, he gave an ad- -. dress, which, to judge from the effeete visibly produced, must have been deeply felt ; and a prayer, having been offered up' to Almighty God, the bodies were consigned to the earth. It was deeply interesting for me to witness the emotion exhibited by a native standing next to me, who seemed to be utterly overcome by grief; yet this veiy man, in 1839, murdered another of God's labourers,. John Williams. The tears and lamentations ofall present at the interment it was painful to witness. From the accounts which I have gathered from the natives you may rely on the correctness of the following description of the murderous attack. . -■; • About noon of the 20th May, a party of nine Bunkhill natives, of whom the chief Lova was the ' leader, called at the mission-house* and enquired for Mr. Gordon. They were informed that he was working a little further down the hill, at a- house which he was building as a winter residence. They went towards the place, but in passing through a grove near the house, eight of the men concealed themselves, while the ninth, named : Nuru-bu-leet, went further down to inveigle Mr. . Gordon into the trap thus laid for his destruction., \ Mr. Gordon had unfortunately sent all his* boys away to gather grass for the roof of the new houße, „- , and was unattended, when Nuru-bu-leet walked up to him, and asked for some calico for himself and the othera of the party who, he said, were waiting at the mission-house. Mr. Gordon took up a piece of board, and wrote on it with a piece of charcoal, " Give these men a yard of cotton,oaoW- __io kogova to-the savage.. and_told Jum ■- to take it to Mrs. Gordon, who would give him . what he wanted. This, however, would not have suited the intentions of, Naru-bu-leet. He told the r . missionary that Lova wished particularly to see , him, and to get some medicine for a sick, man, and that he had, therefore, better go up to his own house. Mr. Gordon , pointing to a plate containing some food which Mra. Gordon had Bent him, said, " I havo not yet eaten, but never mind ! I can do so as 1 well at the house." Andwrappinguptheplate .., in his handkerchief he started up the hill, followed , by the native. On arriving at the ambush Naro- ; bu-leet buried his in _tr. Gordon's spine. He immediately fell, uttering a loud cry. Naru-bu-leet gave hinTanother stroke on the right side of the neck, which "almost severed the head from the body; and the others rushing from their , concealment, quickly cut their poor victim to, pieces. While this tragedy was being enacted, another native, whose name was Ouben ran towards the mission-house, and Mrs. Gordon, who had been alarmed by the fiendish yells and laughter ofthe Bavages, had run out, and was standing near an outhouse. She asked Ouben what all the noise was about? He laughed and said, " Nothing ; it is only the boys amusing themselves." She said, •'Where are the boys?" and turned round. Ouben then, with the tomahawk, which he carried concealed behind his back, struck her a blow below the shoulder-blade ; and, on her falling on a heap of grass, he nearly cut the head off, and otherwise mutilated her in various parts of the body. Such was the fate of two of God's most zealous servants^ It is now four years since Mr. Gordon and his wife ! arrived here, viz., since 14th June, 1857, and during this time they have laboured hard among the rude and ferocious Erromangans with little apparent success. Privations of themost distress--ing kind have been cheerfully and uncomplainingly borne, and the many attempts made against their lives, although hitherto unsuccessful, have rendered their residence here continually full, of anxiety and alarm. The cause of the murder I am informed, ana from my own experience I am certain to be the case, is as follows: — Several months ago the measles, which had previously raged in Sydney, made its appearance in New Caledonia, and there, notwithstanding the exertions of the Governor and the other officials, it rapidly made progress, and a Berioua* mortality waa the result. The infection was thence carried by the various trading vessels calling there To alltHe'aurrouhaing islands, and fearful were the ravages of the distemper amengst the natives. At Lefou, Mare, Aniteum, Tana, Sandwich, Espirito Santo, and Erroinanga, thou^ sands and thousands died — in fact some of theße places have been nearly depopulated. Strange to say a similar disease has never before made its appearance among the natives, and they atone* attributed it to their connection with the white men, and called it the " white man's curse." The consequence of this idea, especially among the more savage tribes, was .naturally a bitter hostility against foreigners, and singularly enough, against theonly class who had had nothing to do with the introduction of the disease, but, on the contrary; who had tried all means in their power to avert the calamity— -I mean the missionaries. At Aniteum, where the mortality was dreadful, ths natives repeatedly threatened to take the life of Mr. and Mrs. Geddie, and they burnt down the two handsome churches there. At Tana matters were equally bad : repeated attacks were made on Mr, Paton and his property ; and I myself on one occasion, heard Miaki, the chief at Port Besolution, , threaten to take his life if he would not go away in the vessel which brought me there. He refused to go, and hitherto his life has been spared, but I much fear that unless he has left before the tidings ofthe Erromangan massacre reaches Tana, he will fall a victim. Here, however, the malady being so virulent as to threaten the extermination of toe natives, and their characters being so savagely ferocious, the greatest animosity existed towards the whites; and notwithstanding that Mr. Gordon went daily from morning to night amongst the people, administering medioine, and striving to alleviate as far as lay in his power their misery, he became the object of their extreme hatred. Niuvan, a chief, having been prostrated by the disease, when almost dying, sent for Mr. Gordon, who gave him Borne medicine. Nuivan died next day ; the tribe said that the missionary had poisoned, him, and it was resolved to kill all the whites. A plan was laid, and so ingeniously artful was the scheme that had it not been divulged by a friendly native, about ten minutes before the time appointed for I its execution, we would almost certainly have all I perished. Of course, when the party cam© to carry their intentions into effect we were prepared, and they went off disappointed. To add to their feelingß of enmity towards Mr. Gordon, there was yet Sher reason, and to Nitrate this I copy the following .entry in his .diary. Speaking of thia einjrular disease which is strange and alarming; to •IViue writes: "It was proceeded by nearly an universal opposure that God would visit them to iudgment, and warned them moat solemnly but a few days before they were attacked. The chiefs, who mantain that, to give up their idols is the cessation of their rules, can hardly now persuade their people that this is not th« finger of Jehovah, « I warned them to flee from the wrath to come, but they took not warning till too late.." From the disease following close on these warnings, the natives believed that the missionary had prayed to God to Bend it on them ; and this belief readily accorded with the fixed ideas of witchcraft which obtain universally in this island. About ; two months ago he writes:-" It seems that I was nearly shot two Sabbaths ago, near Brakhill, as I was getting on my horse. Some circumstance prevented-perhapa the torrents of rain which fell, while I was engaged as Paid and Silas by the Macedonian river side. It is almost impossible for a missionary to fall into greater perils among such a people, for their belief uj witchcraft is universal, and they seem to took upon me as their destroyer." About a fortnight before his death he preached at Bunk-hill rebuking his hearers sharply for their idolatry .and wickedness. Thia offended the *^.i^.J^ solved oil his murder; and how well ttey succeeded in their devilish designs the event has the gloom and of this dreadful event will ocoaenn tothe relative v and friends of thtsa HwrtjTS, and indeed to il