The first step after their arrival was to divide the whole island into nine equal portions, to the exclusion of those poor people whom they had seduced to accompany them, and some of whom are stated to have been carried off against their inclination.

At first they were considered as the friends of the white men, but very soon became their slaves.

They assisted in the cultivation of the soil, in building houses, and in fetching wood and water, without murmuring or complaining; and things went on peaceably and prosperously for about two years, when Williams, who had lost his wife about a month after their arrival, by a fall from a rock while collecting bird's eggs, became dissatisfied, and insisted on having another wife, or threatened to leave the island in one of the _Bounty's_ boats.

Being useful as an armourer, the Europeans were unwilling to part with him, and he, still persisting in his unreasonable demand, had the injustice to compel one of the Otaheitans to give up his wife to him.
By this act of flagrant oppression his countrymen made common cause with their injured companion, and laid a plan for the extermination of the Europeans; but the women gave a hint of what was going forward in a song, the burden of which was, 'Why does black man sharpen axe ?--to kill white man.' The plot being thus discovered, the husband who had his wife taken from him, another whom Christian had shot at (though, it is stated, with powder only), fled into the woods, and were treacherously murdered by their countrymen, on the promise of pardon for the perpetration of this foul deed.
Tranquillity being thus restored, matters went on tolerably well for a year or two longer; but the oppression and ill-treatment which the Otaheitans received, more particularly from Quintal and M'Koy, the most active and determined of the mutineers, drove them to the formation of another plot for the destruction of their oppressors, which but too successfully succeeded.

A day was fixed for attacking and putting to death all the Englishmen while at work in their respective plantations.
Williams was the first man that was shot.