Murdered By

Natives

Another Case in N. Caledonia

From Our Own Correspondent

Noumea, Nov. 26.

I AM reminded of considerable New Caledonian history by the announce ment that Emmanuel Bouye, a 33-years-old foreman employed by the New Caledonian Public Works Depart ment, at Hienghene, east coast, has been the victim of a brutal murder by natives of the region, who were working as a road gang under him, near Tiwande.

At the moment of resuming work on the afternoon shift, a native addressed him insolently. M. Bouye went and got his gun: for the natives of this region have a reputation for treachery, and he re turned with another foreman, M. Paim bouc. The native seized his gun by the barrel, and during the struggle that en sued the gun went off, wounding the native in the hand.

The other natives ran up. The two foremen began to retreat. In doing so, M. Bouye fell under the blotos of four attackers, of whom one split his skull with a tomahawk. Later, the natives were rounded up by New Caledonian troops, and some 35 were brought to Noumea for trial.

The region in which this drama of the New Caledonian bush occurred is one already haunted by the ghosts of sixteen white colonists who were murdered, and in certain cases mutilated, during Chief Noel’s revolt in 1917. The revolt was suppressed, after a campaign of many months in the northern half of the

island, by 300 loyal native volunteers, led by M. Ratzel, then head of the Colony’s Survey Department.

Eventually Noel, deserted by his fol lowers, doubled back on his tracks and returned to his native village, and took shelter with a former friend, an Arab.

But the Arab attacked him while he was hungrily eating a meal and, cutting off his head with a big machete, he took it along to the gendarme to claim the 2,000 francs reward offered for the bearded rebel chieftain. The head was stuck on a pole, at the cross-roads, as a warning of what happens to rebels.

A few white New Caledonian soldiers, on leave from France, took part in the chase of the rebels—the rest were all away on active service.

One of my acquaintances, now serving in a Noumea store, came back from France in 1918, to find that his own father, a bush settler, had been one of those killed and mutilated. He took his army rifle, went up to Hienghene, and shot the first native he saw. He explained to the Noumea Court that he did it be cause he felt his father’s blood calling for vengeance; and he was eventually released.

M. Ratzel, referred to above, was a boy in Alsace, in 1870, when the Germans seized his country. He tells a story about the way the German police tried to bribe him —a kid only more than five years old —with a packet of sweets, to betray his grandfather, a farmer. Though so young, he had many strange adventures, and some years elapsed before he could re join his father in French Mulhouse. To his dismay, no one was at Mulhouse station to meet him, when he crossed the frontier; and he only recognised his father when a strange man came up to him in the street and asked him if he was not young Ratzel. The whole family, of course, had elected to remain French.

M. Ratzel came out of retirement at the time of the Free French Revolution in New Caledonia, in September, 1940, and he became Governor Sautot’s Chef de Cabinet and right-hand man. He has played a distinguished part in local administration. He went back into re tirement when M. Sautot was recalled to London last May.