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<em280@cam.ac.uk> But what I think you need to consider is the value of that gold at a time when the Matebele people had been impoverished by the BSACO, through the land dispossession. Certainly, gold was so important to the Matebele. I think the whole issue lies in the respect they attached to the missionary- you may need to realise that he was personally of a different kind from the rest. remember at the time when Helm deceived the King through his [mis-]interpretation of the Rudd Concession, it is Rees and I think Elliot who went and told the King that he was cheated, but at the same time pleaded against the trial of Helm that was imminent. So, Rees occupied a very central place in Matebeleland. You may also need to look at how he treated the Ndebele on the farms and the nature of his reports. they seem not to carry these brutish social Darwinist feelings of the other missionaries. The Ndebele were good traders, as you might also have discovered- yet there is little evidence of the items of trade. for instance their earliet relations with missionaries, like Moffat were for trade-and it is likely that they exchanged gold for guns or any thing of that sort. I do not think that you will be able to find any missionary that was given such a gift in Southern Africa. Rees was more into the African life than all others, and was at good books with the aristocracy.
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