Rensselaer Republican, Volume 14, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 February 1882 — A Wicked Missionary. [ARTICLE]

A Wicked Missionary.

Several vague dispatches, it will be remembered, were published in July last, reporting that a terrible massacre had taken place at Taputeopea, one of - -1 A ‘ \ : ,

the islands of the Gilbert group, situated between latitude 1 degree south and 2 degrees 30 minutes north, longi tude 172 degrees and 174 degress and 30- minutes east .This., slaughter of n&tives wjas conducted ufader the direction of Kubu, a native of the Sandwich Islands, and ao ordinary missionary from one of the.. proselytizing societies having its headquarters at Honululu. The following details are given by a reporter of the Ban Francisco Chronicle, who visited the American schooner Pannonia, which has lately returned from a cruise among the Line Islands and Fiji. The man Kabu went to Taputeonea in the Hawaiian Government steamer Storm Bird, about two years ago. He succeeded in converting a number of the natives—in fact a large majority of them. As recompense for his evangelical labors he received quantities of copra (dried cocoanut), pearl and turtle shells, which he sold to the trading schooners belonging to Sydney, which cruise in the South Seas. In March last his demands became so exorbitant and oppressive that the people living on the south side ot the Island refused to meet the calls. Kabu armed his followers with guns, clubs and spears, and attacked the perverts. In the attrocities that followed, as related by a survivor, to some white men who live on one of the Islands to the north of the group, all the old instincts of cannibalism were aroused in these fiends. The women were outraged, and their bodies, with tjiose of young children, were eaten. After tne cravings of these inhuman wretches had been satiated, the bodies were piled up in a house, and the ghastly funeral pyre was fired by the hand of the miscreant Kabu. When the British schooner Elizabeth was at the Island the decomposing remains were still visible, emitting a horrible stench. In July the Storm Bird again visited the Gil bert group and carried Kabu to Honululu, presumably to report on his conduct. The investigation, however, wag never made public. Kubu returned to Taputeonea by the Storm Bird, invested with the office of a Bishop. He still resides on the Islaud carrying on trade and converting the heathen.