The Story of the Ba Rebellion

The Pioneers: The Story of the Ba Rebellion

By W. E. Newton

PIONEERS needed brave hearts and conquering spirits to cope with the primitive, uncivilised conditions of Fiji in the early days of European settle ment there.

If John Pfluger and his wife Mary, two of the first pioneers of the Rewa and Ba districts, had not been so strongly endowed with the necessary attributes, they would not have survived a life so fraught with difficulty and danger. John Pfluger settled on the Rewa River in 1866, where he began coffee and cotton planting, but his main difficulty, as a planter, was in getting Fijian labour.

The natives would not work on the plan tations.

This obstacle was overcome by bringing natives from the Solomon Islands but

this meant that, while orocuring them, his young wife and three small children had to be left alone, with danger lurking on all sides.

While the men folk were away from their homes, many a woman and her children were murdered by the cannibal hillmen. On one tragic afternoon at Ba, a Solomon Island boy employed bv thp Burns’ Plantation, swam the river to tell the Pflugers of an attack on his master’s family by the hillmen. John Pfluger, and the few neighbouring settlers, armed with rifles, went to investigate.

The first horrible evidence of the tragedy was the sight of Mrs. Burns being dragged, by her long hair, across the river to a native oven. Some shots fired at the heads of the hillmen scattered them But it was too late; Mrs. Burns was dead.

John Pfluger wrapped his shirt around her and the men carried her body to Wala-Levu where they buried her. A hean of stones in the canefields there marks the spot to-day.

After burying Mrs. Burns, the settlers swam the river to the Burns’s home and

there they found the bodies of Burns and two of his children. The youngest child whom the mother had frantically put into a cedar box to try and save her, was later found suffocated.

Many times, when an attack from the hillmen threatened, Mary Pfluger took her children into the river intending to drown them rather than let the natives murder and eat them. That they escaped actual attack was probably because King Cakabau had visited the Pfluger family and had bestowed some honour of his own upon them. This had made a great im pression on the Fijians.

One of Mary Pfluger’s most shocking experiences at Rewa was through a native woman whom she employed to do a little cooking for her. One morning, on going into the kitchen, she saw human hands protruding from the hanging cooking-pot.

Horrified, she demanded an explanation from the native woman. “Kai-kai,” re plied the woman. She was going to eat them. They were very good; hands were a special delicacy.

Her mistress got the pot down and sent the surprised woman packing with it, telling her never to come near the place again.

JOHN PFLUGER was the leader of the Ba rebels when they revolted against what they considered the unjust laws imposed upon them when the British Government took over the territory.

Government officials arrested the nine rebels and took them aboard the warship “Pearl” on which they were to be taken to Levuka (then the capital of Fiji), to be imprisoned.

A native boy ran to Mary Pfluger and

told her the news. Immediately, arming herself with a rifle, she called to the native women to mind her children, and ran to the shore. There she was rowed to the warship which lay some distance

out. As they reached the “Pearl” the dinghy capsized and, being unable to swim, Mary was hauled on board the war ship in a half-drowned state, in the capsize, her Polynesian oarsman had wisely held onto the rifle, which he handed to her as he was pulled onto the ship. She then called for the captain, Mr. Thurston (afterwards Sir Harry Thurston) and demanded that her hus band and the other rebels be released.

Mr. Thurston refused.

“They must go to Levuka, to be tried there,” he said.

Mary Pfluger insisted. The Captain was adamant. And then, without hesitation, Marv lifted her rifle and shot him, graz ing his arm.

In the commotion that followed, the manacled rebels came onto the deck and one of them, a Mr. Limburg, shouted: “Come on, men—dive!” They all followed him into the water.

Mary Pfluger was handed down into the dinghy by the Polynesian, and she and the rebels all got safely away.

No further action was taken against them—perhaps because, on investigation, their “revolt” was found to be just. But, as one of the men an the warship said!

“Mrs. Pfluger, in her dripping bright red dress and long black hair, was the most beautiful woman we had ever seen,” one wonders if there were another reason, in that age of gallantry, for letting the rebels and their lovely defender go in peace.

John Pfluger, one of the Rebels—

—and his beautiful wife, Mary, who rescued them.