The European Discovery Kosrae Island
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For Mwet Kosrae THE EUROPEAN DISCOVERY OF KOSRAE ISLAND Accounts by -{,: Louis Isidore Duperrey Jules Sebastien Cesar Dumont D'Urville Rene Primevere Lesson Fyedor Liitke and Friedrich Heinrich von Kittlitz Translated and Edited by Lynn Takata Ritter and Philip L. Ritter Prepared for the Historic Preservation 0 illce Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands THE MICRONESIAN SURVEY REPORT SERIES MICRONESIAN ARCHAEOLOGICAL SURVEY Editors Ross Cordy REPORT NUMBER 13 Scott Russell Gracme Ward FOREWORD As part of the Trust Territory's ongoing 'Tools for Survey and Planning' program, the His toric Preservation Office in late 1982 made tentative arrangements to have translated from Russian portions of Fyedor Lutke's account of his visit to the island of Kosrae in 1827. Dr. Glynn Barratt, an eminent Russian scholar, had offered to do the translation which was to be funded by a grant provided by the Historic Preservation Office. During the course of project planning, however, it was brought to our attention that the French version of Lutke's Kosrae material had previously been translated by Lynn and Philip Ritter. The work had been started by the Ritters during their stay on Kosrae in 1974-75. After contacting the Ritters the Historic Preservation Office learned that in addition to the Lutke material, Phil and Lynn had translated the accounts of Duperrey, D'Urville, Lesson and Kittlitz dealing with their respective Kosrae visits. These accounts had been organized These pages were originally typed into Stanford into one volume entitled The European Discovery of Kosrae Island. Because of the ex University's LOTS computer and then transferred . by tape to Stanford's SCORE, both DEC-20 sys pense, the volume had not been published; the Ritters had elected to produce only a few tems. The work was then formatted to eamera copies which were distributed to a small group of Kosrae scholars and a limited number of ready copy using the TEX text preparation pro libraries in Micronesia. gram and a DOVER printer. Realizing the importance of this material, the Historic Preservation Office proposed that the volume appear in the Micronesian Archaeologiral Report series. We were excited by the prospects of including such a valuable volume in our series and pleased to know that, once published, we could insure it a wide distribution throughout Micronesia, the Pacific and the United States. Happily, the Ritters enthusiastically endorsed our proposal and took the time to have the volume typeset. Copyright © 1982 Philip L. Ritter Lynn, who holds a degree in French from the University of California at Berkeley and Phil, and Lynn S. Ritter who received his PhD in social anthropology from Standord University, have combined to produce a fine volume, one which will be of value to historians, anthropologists, archaeo logists and others interested in the early history of Kosrae. MICRONESIAN ARCHAEOLOGICAL SURVEY Historic Preservation 0 ffiee It should be noted here that Dr. Barratt has completed translating the Russian version of Office of Lhe High Commissioner Lutke's Kosrae material. This translation together with notes concerning Lutke's Kosrae Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands artifact collection now housed at the Peter the Great Museum in the U.S.S.R. and photo -UNIVERSITY OF A1JCRlAND IIBRARY SAIPAN CM 96950 reproductions of original drawings will appear in an upcoming MAS volume. I~t'l5lgJloI3IFJ 117f First Published May 1982 Scott Russell WZ. & PACIFlt Director Q9(p·(o iv Office of Historic Preservation t,t9 June 1982 PREFACE The following pages contain the translations of five accounts written by participants in two expeditions that stopped at Kosrae Island in the early nineteenth century.· The visit of the ship la Coquille, which apparently was the first European ship to stop at Kosrae, is described in brief accounts by its captain, Duperrey, and by the first officer, Dumont d'Urville. A longer, more detailed description of that visit is provided by Lesson, the medical officer and naturalist on the ship. The stay of what apparently was the second European ship to stop at the island, the Senyavin, is described in great detail by its captain, Liitke, and by the naturalist KitLlitz. Together these accounts provide exceptionally rich documentation of the first known contacts between Westerners and the inhabitants of the highly stratified volcanic island of Kosrae. Duperrey, Dumont d'Urvi\le and Lesson wrote their accounts in French, and Liitke assisted in the translation of his account from Russian to French. Lynn Ritter has translated these accounts into English, a project that she be~an while we were living on Kosrae and involved in anthropological research. Her training and background made her quite qualified for the task. Kittlitz, however, wrote in his native German, and I am responsible for the translation of his account. Unfortunately, I am far from fluent in German; so once the basic translation had been completed, I obtained the assistance of a native speaker of German (and an anthropologist), Ursula Funk. She spent a number of hours going over tlie most problematical passages with me and saved me from a number of errors. I acknowledge her assistance with gratitude. The reader is warned, however, that there may y.et be some inaccuracies, particularly in the translation of Kittlitz. As with all translations, there is the problem of how far one should go in reducing the original style to idiomatic English. There are reasons why one might not want to make an early nineteenth century Frenchman or Prussian sound like a late twentieth century American, hut too direct a translation would prove difficult to read. The first stages of the translations consisted of fairly literal versions. They were then edited a number of times to. make the English more idiomatic and, in general, to make them more readable. Both the German and French originals are characterized by long sentences with large numbers of qualifying clauses and by excessive and somewhat archaic punctuation. Although we hope that some of the original style has been maintained, many long and rambling sentences (esp~eially in the case of the German), as well as a few of the longer paragraphs, have been broken into smaller components. THE EUROPEAN DISCOVERY OF KOSRAE ISLAND Preface Italics are, used as by the original authors except for a few additions for the sake of spelling rules. In it, Leluh is Lelu or Lelil, Okaht is Okat and, until recently, KosTae was consistency. In addition, italics are 'used in a very few cases wher'e words have not been Kusaie. translated. Inserted or summarized material is placed between bracket.s and printed in a ThcH" I,Clln"I:""ons were ori~inally intend"d to aid ollr rcseard, in I<osraean demo slanted font. For example, sections of Ki,ttlitz's work have been abridged, and the passages graphy, social organization and history. One of the purposes in publishing them is to make that arc not directly translated have been briefly summarized. Kittlitz's account is' quite them readily available to others carrying out similar or related research.' We hope that long, and we decided not to translate all of his detailed and often repetitious descriptions they will prove interesting to those concerned with the history of European exploration, to of plant and animal life. Finally, page numbers are placed between brackets and raised students of social change and to Oceania scholars in general, as well as to those interested slightly. These numbers tell approximately where each of the pages in the original German specifically in Micronesia and Kosrae. An additional, and perhaps more important, reason or French text began and should prove a useful guide for researchers who wish to check or for printing these accounts is to make them available to the increasing number of Kosraeans Cite the original text. The exact page changes are, of course, only approximate because of who are fluent in English. dilTerences in sentence order between the originals and the English translations. We would like to thank the many Kosraeans who have made our association with their island so pleasant and whose kindness and good nature reflect well on their ancestors who Footnotes that appeared in the 'original texts are indicated by a~terisks and daggers. participated in the events described in the following passages. We also wish to acknowledge We have added a few additional_ footnotes to explain or expand on the text, and these are the assistance provided by Florence Chu of the Stanford University Library and R. Renee numbered consecutively within each chapter. I-Ieyum of the University of Hawaii Library in "btaining access to these and other works on Rough metric equivalents have been inserted following traditional measures. France Kosrae. Francis X. Hezel's and Ross Cordy's encouragement and support helped lead to'this was in the process of transition to the metric system at the time the Coquille visited publication. Graeme Ward of the Historic Preservation Office offered useful editorial advice. Kosrae, ane! ihe explorers generally used traditional rather than metric measures when As noted above, these translations were begun to aid anthropological research on Kosraean estimating lengths and distances. Although the French terms (milles, pieds, pouces, etc.) demography and social organization (Ritter 1978). That research was generously supported have been translated to English (it miles, feet, inches, etc.), they are not exactly equivalent by Stanford University, the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of (Zupko 1978). French feet and inches Were slightly longer than the English units. All of General Medical Studies. Finally, Stanford University's Center for Research in Youth the explorers appear to have used the nautical mile (mille marine or Seemeilen) which is DeVelopment provided the use of their computer accounts during the final editing and approximately 1.85 kilometers as opposed to the 1.609 kilometer English mile.