‘FIRST CONTACTS’ IN POLYNESIA ‘FIRST CONTACTS’ IN POLYNESIA The Samoan Case (1722–1848) Western Misunderstandings about Sexuality and Divinity Serge Tcherkézoff Published by ANU E Press The Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200, Australia Email: [email protected] This title is also available online at: http://epress.anu.edu.au/first_contacts_citation.html National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Author: Tcherkezoff, Serge. Title: First contacts in Polynesia : the Samoan case (1722-1848) : western misunderstanding about sexuality and divinity / Serge Tcherkezoff. Edition: New ed. ISBN: 9781921536014 (pbk.) 9781921536021 (web) Subjects: Samoan Islands--Foreign relations--Europe. Europe--Foreign relations--Samoan Islands. Samoan Islands--History. Samoan Islands--Social life and customs. Dewey Number: 327.961304 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Cover: Moana Matthes, Bruce Harding, Emily Brissenden Cover Illustrations: Samoan fine mat: in possession of, and photographed by, Dr Patricia Wallace, MBCPS. ‘Cook had taken great pains to make friends with the natives’; John Lang, The Story of Captain Cook (London & Edinburgh, TC & EC Jack, n.d.), opp. p.27. [The Children’s Heroes Series] ‘A [Samoan] village maiden in festive attire’; Plate I, Augustin Krämer, Die Samoa-Inseln (Stuttgart, E. Schweizerbartsche Verlagsbuchhandlung [E. Nagele], 1903), vol. 1 (p.643). ‘A Young Woman of Otaheite, Dancing’; in John Hamilton Moore, A New and Complete Selection of Voyages and Travels (London, Alexander Hogg, 1780?), vol. 2, n.p. Professor Tcherké zoff (Photo by Bruce Harding, MBCPS). Printed by University Printing Services, ANU First published © 2004 Serge Tcherkézoff, Macmillan Brown Centre for Pacific Studies, The Journal of Pacific History Inc. This edition © 2008 ANU E Press Table of Contents In memory of the Samoans who discovered the Papālagi vii Acknowledgements ix Introduction 1 Part One: the Samoan discovery of Europeans (1722-1848) 1. June 1722, the Dutch ‘discovery’ by Jacob Roggeveen 15 2. May 1768, the French ‘discovery’ by Louis-Antoine de Bougainville 23 3. December 1787, Lapérouse: first incursion on land 29 4. Lapérouse, the Ignoble Savage, and the Europeans as ‘spirits’ 51 5. The turn of the century: from Edward Edwards (1791) to 69 Otto von Kotzebue (1824) 6. Commercial vessels. Another French visit: Lafond de Lurcy 81 7. The late 1830s: Dumont d’Urville and Wilkes; Jackson and Erskine 91 8. Conclusion 109 Part Two: Methodological comparisons 9. ‘On the boat of Tangaroa’. Humanity and divinity in 113 Polynesian-European first contacts: a reconsideration 10. Sacred cloth and sacred women. On cloth, gifts and nudity in 159 Tahitian first contacts: a culture of ‘wrapping-in’ 11. The Papālagi (‘Europeans’) and the Sky. Etymology and divinity, 187 linguistic and anthropological dialogue Conclusion: Ethnohistory-in-the-field 203 Illustrations 211 Bibliography 223 v In memory of the Samoans who discovered the Papālagi Europeans have been losing their way in the Pacic from the beginning when early explorers made up for navigational errors by claiming inhabited islands as new discoveries. Never mind that the islanders had simultaneously discovered the explorers, no doubt with a fair bit of despair and surprise, but since it took years for islanders to learn the tiny scratches that the visitors called writing, the European claims had a head start in the history books. ... Curious Caucasians could sail in to a new port in the good old days without permission and be hailed later as daring explorers who broadened the horizons of mankind. Islanders doing the same today are known as overstayers. They are not hailed as daring and are very quickly sent back over the horizon (Ulafala Aiavao 1994). vii Acknowledgements Part One of this study was drafted in a preliminary form while I was a Research Scholar at the Macmillan Brown Centre for Pacific Studies in 2001 (January-April). During the time that I was again hosted as a Scholar by the Centre in 2002 (February-March, July-October) and when I visited the Centre in 2003 (January-February), Part One was enlarged and Part Two was written. So to a very great extent this work is the outcome of the hospitality I have enjoyed. I express my deepest gratitude to the Centre and its staff for this wonderful opportunity: the Centre's successive Board Chairs (and also Acting Directors in 2002), Professor Peter Hempenstall and Dr John Henderson; the Director in 2001, Dr Ueantabo Neemia-Mackenzie, and the new Director Professor Karen Nero. Peter Hempenstall's and John Henderson's familiarity with Samoan studies (colonial history, political science) was of great help to me. I owe a special debt of gratitude to Dr Bruce Harding, Research Associate, who was kind enough to take a deep interest in my Samoan studies and who offered to undertake the heavy task of editing the awful Frenglish of the first draft of almost the whole book, and of designing, together with Moana Matthes, the cover. In all matters his generosity was beyond imagining. Many thanks to Moana Matthes for her hospitality towards the incoming scholars, as the administrative officer with responsibility for the Centre: it was much more than administrative hospitality, it was, every day, friendship and hospitality in the `Pacific way'. My special thanks go to The Journal of Pacific History, Brij Lal, Peter Hempenstall, and Karen Nero who made possible the publication of this study, and to the various people who, in addition to Dr Harding, helped with translating and editing; in France, Karin Johnson-Sellato who did a preliminary editing of Part One and carefully translated into English the quotations from Lafond de Lurcy and from Dumont d'Urville; in Canberra, Dr Stephanie Anderson who translated chapter 9, and parts of chapter 10 and the Conclusion, all of which I had written in French, and then edited the whole final manuscript before it went to the JPH board; Jennifer Terrell for the final checking and formatting. The Macmillan Brown Centre would not be the significant research institution that it is, and this study could not have been achieved in such a short time, without the Macmillan Brown LibraryÐcertainly one of the best world-wide for Polynesian studies, with its rich historical collection (begun by Professor Macmillan Brown) and its mission to add to its collection most of the contemporary items published in even the remotest places of the Pacific. I am extremely grateful to its dedicated members, Max Broadbent, the Chief Librarian, and his staff, who were always very helpful, and traced items as old as Forster's 1772 translation of Bougainville's Voyage, and the original twenty volumes, in French, of one of Dumont d'Urville's expeditions, when I had not expected to find these works among the rare books of the library. My thanks go also to the ix ‘First Contacts’ in Polynesia librarians of the Central Library of the University for allowing me to read the Schouten narrative of 1619 in the Rare Books section. Thank you, too, to my fellow anthropologists from the Sociology and Anthropology Department, Dr Patrick McAllister and (in 2001) Dr Claudia Gross, who welcomed me to their seminars and thus contributed, together, with my colleagues at the Centre, to making me feel at home on the campus of Canterbury University. Claudia Gross also devoted a considerable amount of time to reading Part One of the manuscript as part of a review process, and I would like to thank her very much for her enthusiastic support and for her very useful suggestions. My thanks, too, to Michael Goldsmith for his supportive review, and to Tom Ryan for his preliminary reading of Part One. The book was nalised during my stay at the Research School of Pacic and Asian Studies, The Australian National University, as an Australian Research Council Linkage Fellow (2004), in the Gender Relations Centre. My deepest thanks to Margaret Jolly for this wonderful opportunity. In its preliminary form in 2001, which consisted only of Part One, the main aim of this study was to trace the origin or the Western misconceptions about Samoan sexuality. It was dedicated to Professor Freeman who was the rst to form the hypothesis, in his book of 1983 (p. 227), even if it was just a brief note, that there is no reason to think that pre-Christian Samoa would have been substantially dierent from Samoa in later periods in terms of the sexual rules pertaining in adolescence given what is known of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Although we disagreed and argued about the reconstruction of the causes that led Margaret Mead to produce her distorted conclusions about the ethos of Samoan adolescence, we certainly agreed on the ethnographic critique of Mead’s writings about Samoa. In its present form, this study is mainly dedicated to the Samoans who, from 11 December 1787 and onwards, sometimes paid a heavy price for discovering the existence of the Papālagi (‘Europeans’). Mo oe Logona-I-Taga John Derek Freeman! Mo outou o fanau o le lau eleele na fetaiai ma tagata Papalagi i aso anamua faapea foi aso nei. This book is also dedicated to my son Tuvalu Junior Rokeni Fuimaono. His passion for Samoan history has been a strong encouragement to provide his generation with a sketch of this forgotten past. Addendum 2008: Many thanks to Stewart Firth, Margaret Jolly, Vicki Luker, Jenny Terrell, and Darrell Tryon who contributed to the decision for this reprint by ANU E Press. And to Duncan Beard who did a wonderful new edition, at such short notice, for the volume to be rea dy for the ceremonial event of October 2008 when I was booked to present to the Samoan people, with the help of the French Embassy in Wellington, the full English translation of the French historical texts narrating these early encounters (deposited at NUS and Samoa National Archives).