After this expedition, the conduct of the Independent Utman Khels—as distinguished from the Utman Khels of Sam Baizai—was uniformly good, and for more than twenty years the Indian Government had no grounds for any complaint against them. On the 9th December, 1876, however, an offence of the very gravest description was committed by this tribe, chiefly by men from Ambahar and the Laman; a number of them, instigated by persons of influence in British territory, attacking a body of unarmed coolies engaged in the preliminary operations connected with the canal about to be taken from the Swat River near Abazai. It appears that the party, consisting of a hundred men, surrounded the tents in which the coolies were sleeping about 2 a.m.; then, at a given signal, having cut through the ropes of the tents, threw them down and butchered the helpless, struggling inmates through the tent-cloth. The camp was then robbed of almost everything it contained, some of the dead and wounded being stripped of the very clothes on their backs. Of the sixty-five coolies, six were killed and twenty-seven wounded, some dangerously. Having plundered the camp, the raiders effected their escape to the hills before any assistance could reach the spot from Fort Abazai; but all the neighbouring headmen, suspected of complicity, were apprehended and sent into Peshawar. It seems probable that this raid would never have taken place if proper steps had been taken for the protection of the men employed on the canal works—a project, and the taking up land for which, known to have aroused suspicion and dislike; and it cannot be denied that sufficient precautions were not taken by the responsible officers to prevent an attack of this kind, when the work was being carried on so near the border. It could not, however, have well been anticipated that a Muhammadan tribe would, without provocation and with no quarrel with the British Government, attack and kill an unarmed body of their co-religionists—a dastardly outrage, which brought down upon the perpetrators the virtual excommunication of the aged Akhund of Swat. [Sidenote: Expedition of 1878]