Planter attacks named different perpetrators in rival rumor versions

Evidence

Just recently I heard a rumor about a certain European who prided himself on having hung a Chinese only having cut him down after the coolie had turned entirely blue (people say that it was probably a bluff, but this sort of bluff is the same as committing the act). The brave one who is thought to have done this was Heer Luhmann: I mentioned this sample of humanitarianism to a planter who responded: “no, I heard this about someone else.” Who this other one is I don’t know, but I do know, that such unheard of things occur or at least have occurred. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 1054

Categorization

• CANDY: The grim joke — planters competing to pass off the torture story onto someone else — is a striking social vignette.
• SHARE: For a friend working on rumor studies in colonial settings: the planter’s displacement (‘heard this about someone else’) is a textbook instance of deniable complicity.