User:Taiwantaffy/Dutch Formosa/Lamey Island Massacre

The Lamey Island Massacre was the slaughter of aboriginal inhabitants of Hsiao Liuchiu island (also known as Lamey, Lamay or Gouden Leeuwseylant) off the coast of Taiwan by Dutch soldiers in 1634. The killings were part of a campaign in retaliation for the murder of fifty shipwrecked Dutch sailors in 1622 by natives of the island.

Background
Two years before the Dutch East India Company established a presence on Taiwan in 1624, a Dutch ship named the Golden Lion (Old Dutch: Gouden Leeuw) was wrecked on the coral reefs of Hsiao Liuchiu, then known to the Dutch as Lamey or Lamay island. The survivors went to look around the island, at which point the surgeon and a soldier with the group were isolated and cut to pieces. Over the following two days the survivors battled to no avail, eventually being overwhelmed and slaughtered to a man by the locals.

Punitive expedition campaigns
Following the murder of the Gouden Leeuw survivors, the island was sometimes referred to by the Dutch as Goudenleeuwseylant (Golden Lion Island). There was a desire at the very highest levels of the Dutch East India Company not to let the killings go unpunished. From time to time they made sallies against the island inhabitants, at one stage requesting that the warriors of Mattau assist them in punishing the islanders.

Took refuge in a cave. Dutch sealed up the entrances and burned pans of sulphur and pitch

Aftermath
The island was finally depopulated in 1642 when a merchant named XXXX took the last residents off the island.

Alternate stories
There have been a number of erroneous accounts of the incident, the most obvious of which is the plaque outside the cave where the massacre occurred.

This account is almost completely false from start to finish, as noted by several writers.