rebellion. A spirit medium named Kinjikitile Ngwale, who practiced Folk Islam that incorporated animist beliefs, claimed to be possessed by a snake spirit called Hongo. Ngwale began calling himself Bokero and developed a belief that the people of German East Africa had been called upon to eliminate the Germans. German anthropologists recorded that he gave his followers war medicine that would turn German bullets into water. This "war medicine" was in fact water (maji in Kiswahili) mixed with castor oil and millet seeds. Empowered with this new liquid, Bokero's followers began what would become known as the Maji Maji Rebellion. The end of the war was followed by a period of famine, known as the Great Hunger (ukame), caused in large part by the genocidal scorched-earth policy advocated by Gustav Adolf von Götzen. Uprising The followers of Bokero's movement were poorly armed with spears and arrows, sometimes poisoned. However, they were numerous and believed that they could not be harmed because the Germans' bullets would turn to water. They marched from their villages wearing millet stalks around their foreheads. Initially, they attacked small outposts and damaged cotton plants. On 31 July 1905, Matumbi tribesmen marched on Samanga and destroyed the cotton crop as well as a trading post. Kinjikitile was arrested and hanged for treason. Before his execution, he declared that he had spread the medicine of the rebellion throughout the region. On 14 August 1905, Ngindo tribesmen attacked a small party of missionaries on a safari; all five, including Bishop Spiss (the Roman Catholic Bishop of Dar es Salaam) were speared to death. Soon the Yao tribes started participating and throughout August the rebels moved from the Matumbi Hills in the southern part of what is now Tanzania and attacked German garrisons throughout the colony. The attack on Ifakara, on 16 August, destroyed the small German garrison and opened the way to the key fortification at Mahenge. Though the southern garrison was quite small (there were but 458 European and 588 native soldiers in the entire area), their fortifications and modern weapons gave them an advantage. At Mahenge, several thousand Maji Maji warriors (led by another spirit medium, not Bokero) marched on the German cantonment, which was defended by Lieutenant Theodor von Hassel with sixty native soldiers, a few hundred loyal tribesmen, and two machine guns. The two attacking tribes disagreed on when to attack and were unable to