Poor "John"

Scots trader “John” wasn’t liked. His trade store-home at Tanaeang Village, North Tab iteuea, Gilberts, was sur rounded by a high wooden fence and villagers were for bidden to enter.

John punished trespassers with a leather whip. So the villagers resolved to kill him.

One night, early in 1896, they stormed the trade store and stabbed and punched the Scot to death.

So not to alert the atoll’s numerous European and Chinese traders living to the south, and also the govern ment ships calling from Tarawa and Butaritari to North Tabiteuea, the villagers chopped up the body and dropped it at sea. John’s possessions were buried near his home.

The story of the Scot’s dis appearance, at the time, was that he must have fallen off a canoe in the lagoon and drowned.

True or not, Tabiteuea’s current-day version of one of its more unfortunate traders is typical of the tit-bits still cir culating about the first traders to settle on the atoll, the name of which means “no kings”.

Outside North Tabiteuea, the atoll’s best-known trader was Alfred Kicking (P/M, July, p. 87). But there were at least 10 other traders, six of them Chinese, and scores have de scendents living now on Tab iteuea.

Tradition on Tabiteuea says Butaritari hosted the first Euro pean in the Gilberts. A Scot, Nam Baoba (Robert), he landed off a ship in 1934 and left seven years later on a sailing vessel, Peacock, they say.