Colonel Frederic Cardew, military governor of the Protectorate, in 1898 established a new tax on dwellings and demanded that the chiefs use their peoples to maintain roads. The taxes were often higher than the value of the dwellings, and 24 chiefs signed a petition to Cardew, stating how destructive this was; their people could not afford to take time off from their subsistence agriculture. They resisted payment of taxes. Tensions over the new colonial requirements, and the administration's suspicions towards the chiefs, led to the Hut Tax war of 1898, also called the Temne-Mende War. The British fired first. The Northern front of majority Temne people was led by Bai Bureh. The Southern front, consisting mostly of Mende people, entered the conflict somewhat later for other reasons.