"The efforts of the Australian District Officer William R. Bell were to pacify the area and establish means to collect a head tax, and enforce the British colonial regime. On his fifth annual tax collection, in October 1927, he was killed, along with one other white man and 13 Solomon Islanders in his charge. A massive punitive expedition, known as the Malaita massacre ensued; at least 60 people were killed, and nearly 200 detained in Tulagi (the then capital), where 30 further died from dysentery and other problems. Furthermore, relatives of the slain Solomon Islanders sought spiritual revenge by the deliberate desecration of sacred sites and objects