The Northern Solomons were initially grouped with the Bismarck Archipelago for German administrative purposes. The first official visit from the German administration did not occur until November 1888. The acting administrator Reinhold Kraetke arrived accompanied by an imperial judge, a company manager, a visiting German journalist, a missionary, and a local merchant Richard Parkinson who had been recruiting labourers from the area for several years. A native police force was quickly established. The first punitive expedition undertaken by the German administration occurred in April 1899, in response to the killing of two European seamen in Tinputz Bay the previous year. The landed 20 members of the native police force armed with bows and arrows, who killed seven people, burned a village, and took its valuables. It was not until 1905 that a government station was opened in Bougainville. The station, situated in Kieta, was placed directly under the Governor of German New Guinea.