Then, if we take the following statement made by the only prisoner taken at the time, we have the whole history of the events which took place up to the departure of the punitive party from Goaribari on board the Merrie England.
Statement of Kemere of Dubumuba, taken prisoner at Dopima, Goaribari Island:—
“The name of the village that I was captured in is Dopima. I, however, belong to Dubumuba, a village on Baiba Bari Island. I, myself, was not present at the massacre; only the big men of the village went. I have, however, heard all about it. My father, Marawa, sent me to Dopima to get a tomahawk to build a canoe. The name of the village you camped in the first night is Turotere. The first suggestion for massacring the L.M.S. party came from Garopo, off whose village, Dopima, the Niue was anchored. Word was at once sent round that night to villages in the vicinity to come to help. It is the usual custom for people of surrounding villages, when a large boat is sighted, to congregate in one place. The following villages were implicated: Dopima, Turotere, Bai-ia, Aidio, Eheubi, Goari-ubi, Aimaha, Gewari-Bari, Ubu-Oho, Dubumuba. The next morning all the canoes went off and persuaded Messrs. Chalmers and Tomkins and party to come on shore in the whaleboat. Some of the natives remained to loot the Niue. When they got on shore Messrs. Chalmers and Tomkins and a few boys entered the long house, the rest of the boys remaining to guard the boat. These last, however, were also enticed inside the house on pretence of giving them something to eat. The signal for a general massacre was given by knocking simultaneously from behind both Messrs. Chalmers and Tomkins on the head with stone clubs. This was performed in the case of the former by Iake of Turotere, in that of the latter by Arau-u of Turotere. Kaiture, of Dopima, then stabbed Mr. Chalmers in the right side with a cassowary dagger, and then Muroroa cut off his head. Ema cut off Mr. Tomkins’ head. They both fell senseless at the first blow of the clubs. Some names of men concerned in the murder of the rest of the party are: Baibi, Adade, Emai, Utuamu, and Amuke, all of Dopima; also Wahaga and Ema, both of Turotere.
“All the heads were immediately cut off. We, however, lost one man, Gahibai, of Dopima. He was running to knock a big man [Note: this must be Naragi, chief of Ipisia] on the head, when the latter snatched a stone club from a man standing near, and killed Gahibai. He (Naragi) was, however, immediately overpowered. The other boys were too small to make any resistance. In the meantime the people in canoes left at the Niue had come back after looting her of all the tomahawks, etc. This party was led by Kautiri, of Dopima. Finding the party on shore dead, it was determined to go back to the Niue and kill those on board. However, the Niue got under way, and left, so they could not accomplish their purpose. I think the crew of the Niue were frightened at the noise on shore. Then Pakara, of Aimaha, called out to all the people to come and break up the boat, which had been taken right inside the creek, it being high water. This was done, and the pieces were divided amongst people from the various villages. Pakara is the man who followed and talked to you in the Aimaha Creek for a long time. Directly the heads had been cut off the bodies, some men cut the latter up and handed the pieces over to the women to cook, which they did, mixing the flesh with sago. They were eaten the same day.
“Gebai has got Mr. Chalmers’ head at Dopima, and Mahikaha has got Mr. Tomkins’ head at Turotere. The rest of the heads are divided amongst various individuals. Anybody having a new head would naturally, on seeing strange people coming to the village, hide them away in the bush, and leave only the old skulls in the houses. The same applies to the loot from the Niue.
“As regards the skulls in the houses, those having artificial noses attached to them are of people who have died natural deaths; those that have no noses attached have been killed.”
“Taken by me
C. G. Murray, R.M., W.D.”
Time went on: Murray, who had only taken the billet while he waited for a more congenial appointment, heard of a private secretaryship in South Africa and promptly left for there; Jiear, whose sole experience in handling natives had been gained under Murray, succeeded him as R.M.; Sir George Le Hunte was appointed Governor of South Australia and departed; and a young lawyer, Christopher Stansfield Robinson, who had but recently been appointed Chief Justice in lieu of Sir Francis Winter, recently resigned, acted as Administrator; it had always been the custom in New Guinea for the Chief Justice to perform that duty in the absence of the Lieutenant-Governor, in place—as in most Crown Colonies—of the Colonial Secretary. Robinson was a young man, for whom one might reasonably predict a brilliant career. He was the son of the Venerable Archdeacon Robinson of Brisbane, and therefore his early training had been hardly that of the swashbuckler he was later made out to be; but Robinson had not previously been in command of other men, nor had he any administrative experience. That he was a humane man was proved by the fact that almost his first work was to endeavour to improve the conditions under which the European miners on the gold-fields lived; his second, to prepare Amendments to the Native Labour Ordinance, with a view to better care being taken of native indentured labourers; and his third, to endeavour to better the conditions under which the officers in the Service worked.
At the time Sir George Le Hunte left, the heads of Chalmers and Tomkins were still in the hands of the Goaribari natives, and some of the actual murderers were still uncaptured, although the men and their names were known. It was essential, in Robinson’s opinion, that the heads should be recovered, and the murderers apprehended and brought to trial; for, even in the eyes of the natives of the Western Division, the killing of the Mission party had not been an act of war or revenge, but patently a cold-blooded treacherous murder of men who were, at the time, in the position of guests and entitled to the protection of the very men by whom they were done to death. Robinson decided to go to Goaribari and get the murderers and heads.
The point of interest now is the composition of his party: firstly, Robinson himself, Governor of the Possession and in Supreme Command, but quite inexperienced in the work he was undertaking; next, Jiear, R.M. of the Division, to whom the Governor would naturally look for advice and guidance in the matter; but Jiear, as I have already shown, was also inexperienced, being only a Customs clerk, who had suddenly found himself in the position of officer in charge of a Division, after a short training under a man as ignorant as himself. Next we have Bruce, Commandant of Constabulary, also a recent arrival in the country, inexperienced in dealing with natives, a soldier pure and simple, and incompetent to advise as to any action other than a purely military movement; lastly, Jewell, secretary to Robinson, a young Englishman recently imported by Sir George Le Hunte, and until now, engaged in copying letters in the Government Secretary’s Office. Robinson, Bruce, and Jewell had all arrived in New Guinea at the same time. There was, therefore, on board the Merrie England, from the Administrator downwards, not one man who had previously been engaged in similar work to that which they were about to attempt; the ship’s officers do not count, as they have nothing to do with either the planning or carrying out of district work.
Robinson told me, when he was with me in the Northern Division, what he purposed in the way of recovering the heads and arresting the men in the Western Division; and I expressed a hope that he would take one of the more experienced officers with him, and volunteered to accompany him as A.D.C., for I had some leave due to me and was prepared to spend it in that way. I was, however, at the time very weak from protracted malaria, work and worry; so his Excellency said, “You are worn out and need change and rest; take your leave and go south.”
Judge Robinson went to Goaribari in 1903, within a year of his appointment. Soon after their arrival a number of natives were induced, by the display and gift of trade goods, to go on board the Merrie England; among them were several of the men who had actually participated in the murders, and were identified by a Goaribari man, whom they had brought back with them in the ship. It was decided that, upon a given signal, these men were to be seized by the constabulary. This was done: a violent struggle then began on different parts of the ship’s deck, between the suddenly grabbed men and the police; the other natives fled over the side into their canoes, and then, in conjunction with their friends in other canoes, opened arrow fire on the ship, upon whose deck the struggle was still going on. The constabulary promptly answered with rifle fire; by whom the first order to fire was given has never been quite clear. Several natives were hit, others jumped overboard from their canoes and swam for the shore. Every man on that ship, with one exception, then lost his head: Robinson grabbed his rifle and began wildly blazing at every canoe in sight; Jewell saw a man hit with a bullet, and promptly went into screeching hysteria; what the R.M. did, Heaven and he alone know; some of the European crew of the ship took shelter in the chart house and other refuges, and one of the officers, at least, got his fowling-piece and blazed away. Bruce alone kept his head, ordered the “cease fire,” and thumped every man he found firing; but most of the men were out of sight of one another behind deck houses, etc., and each man imagined that, as long as the firing continued, a fight was going on and blazed away. As a matter of fact, I am convinced that the damage done to the Goaribari was very slight; canoes were emptied, but principally by the men in them diving over the side and making for the shore. The Governor, at the best, was a vile shot; the detachment of constabulary on board came from the Central Division, where, under Captain Barton’s régime, their musketry practice had become a farce, and Bruce had not had time as yet to get it up again.
The Merrie England returned to Port Moresby: the European crew, most of whom had been planted in safe security, described the dreadful battle in which they had taken part; the constabulary bragged of their prowess, and the number of Goaribari each individual had shot; many of the police were related to the tribe from which the Kiwai boys came who had been murdered with Chalmers, and therefore were only too prone to magnify their deeds for the benefit of their relations; while Jewell’s hysteria had evolved at least ten men shot by the Governor, from the one he had seen struck by a bullet, fired by some hand unknown.
Now appears upon the scene the Rev. Charles Abel of the London Missionary Society, on his way south to incur the greatest danger he was ever likely to shove his head into, namely, that of being choked to death at some suburban muffin worry, or dying from mental strain induced by the necessity of telling tales of dire peril incurred in his work, or clergyman’s sore throat from relating stories of cannibalism and crime. He had not been within hundreds of miles of Goaribari, but on his way down the Queensland coast he found an enterprising reporter, and unburdened his soul of a circumstantial tale of treachery, bloody murder and slaughter, on the part of the Governor of New Guinea. “Nothing less than a Royal Commission will satisfy the European population of Port Moresby; their indignation is profound,” he announced, and quite forgot to say that the European population of Port Moresby consisted of a handful of public officials, half of whom were jealous of so young a man as Robinson being put over their heads, and that the rest of the men were profoundly uninterested in the whole affair.