William R. Bell, the District Officer of Malaita in the British Solomon Islands Protectorate, and many of his deputies were killed by Basiana and other Kwaio warriors as part of a plan to resist the head tax imposed by the colonial authorities and what was perceived as an assault on the traditional values.

[1] They attempted to recruit plotters by advancing their grievances against Bell and the government, especially the empowerment of Christian coastal groups that were seen to dishonour their ancestors.

[4] On Monday, 3 October 1927, District Officer Bell moored his ship, the Auki, in Singalagu Harbour, and set up the usual tax collection operation at the house in the glen nearby.

[8] Minutes before, one group of attackers had cut through the loia cane that fastened the tax house, and were able to pull down the walls, pinioning eight policemen inside against their rifles.

[9] The survivors made their way to the Auki and the Wheatsheaf and waited while a small party of Kwaio Christians went ashore to recover Bell's and Lillies' bodies and wrapped them in sailcloth.

Wilson, who had a reputation for roughness from his treatment of some resistance on Guadalcanal, was given orders to patrol the coast of Malaita to gather information.

Officials, knowing that most were probably simply eager to avenge dead relatives or other old scores, decided to limit their participation, and only accepted the help of 40, who for the most part had served in Bell's police force.

[17] The naval personnel, added to "stiffen" the civilian party, also had considerable difficulty with the conditions; when Adelaide returned to Sydney on 18 November, 20% of the crew were hospitalised for malaria, dysentery, and septic sores.

[18] The Europeans largely were no threat to the resistant Kwaio, but the fellow Malaitan police patrols, led by constables who had worked with Bell, were.

[21] The inland base camp was deserted on 21 December, when twenty fugitives remained at large, but all but one surrendered or were captured in the subsequent weeks.

Keesing accounted for this large estimate as including deaths caused by the supernatural vengeance of the ancestors, upset at the desecration of their shrines.

They were held in a stockade near the harbour,[21] awaiting transport on the Ramadi to Tulagi, where they waited in prison without formal charges pressed against them.

[27] In June 1928, seeking a solution to the problem of what to do with those who were acquitted or never charged with crimes, the High Commissioner in Fiji issued a "King's Regulation to Authorise the Detention of Certain Natives Formerly Living on the Island of Malaita.

This permitted Resident Commissioner Kane to continue planning for the resettlement of the Kwaio on another island, an idea he had conceived already in November 1927.

However, Lieutenant-Colonel H.C. Moorhouse, who had considerable colonial experience in Africa and was sent by London to investigate the massacre, quashed the scheme, and urged for the rapid repatriation of the detainees.

[30] There was a precipitous drop in the interior population relative to the coast, and villages became slightly smaller and more widely scattered.

The effective end of the power of the ramo and blood feuding increased spatial mobility and reduced sexual mores.