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I N SEARCH OF SOULS THE CULTURAL INTERACTION BETWEEN HIRAM BINGHAM JR., THE HAWAIIANS AND THE GILBERTESE THROUGH MISSION CONTACT 1857-1903 SANDRA JOY RENNIE (M.A.) A thesis submitted in complete fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of the Australian National University November 1985 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page STATEMENT i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii SUMMARY iv GLOSSARY vi STATEMENT ON FIELD NOTES viii PREFACE xi PROLOGUE 1 PART ONE: THE MAN AND HIS MISSION FIELD 16 CHAPTER ONE: The Young Bingham 17 CHAPTER TWO: Te Aba n Tungaru: The Land of the Gilbertese 45 PART TWO: THE BRINGING OF THE BOOK 72 CHAPTER THREE: Bingham amidst the Wars of Abaiang and 75 Tarawa CHAPTER FOUR: Bingham’s Co-Workers - the Hawaiian 118 Missionaries CHAPTER FIVE: Bingham, the Tioba Cult and the Tabiteuean 164 Civil War PART THREE: THE INNER CONFLICT 204 CHAPTER SIX: Hiram Bingham Jr. - Preacher or Linguist? 206 CHAPTER SEVEN: In the Land of their Teachers: the 243 Gilbertese Contract Labourers in Hawaii CHAPTER EIGHT: The End of a Dream 279 EPILOGUE 314 Page APPENDICES: 1. Genealogies of Chiefly Families on Abaiang and 321 Tarawa 2. Gilbertese War Song 323 3. The Hawaiian Missionaries to the Gilbert Islands 324 4. Chronology (at the Time of the First Missionary 328 Contact in the Gilbert Islands) BIBLIOGRAPHY 333 STATEMENT This thesis contains no material published elsewhere except where reference is made in the text. It is not and has not been used for the award of any other degree or diploma in any university and is the sole work of the author. a m c th c i Sandra Rennie ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS During the long period of preparing a dissertation, a debt of gratitude to many accrues. My deeply-felt thanks go to my supervisor, Dorothy Shineberg, who encouraged me and offered constructive criticisms throughout my research. I wish to thank also my temporary supervisor, Barrie Macdonald who supervised me during 1981 but also offered his valued assistance for a much longer period. Professor H. E. Maude and Mrs H.C. Maude not only provided me with rare material and lively discussion but always warmly and hospitably welcomed me into their home. Others who rendered me assistance in a variety of ways, including provision of material, discussion, and assistance with the Gilbertese language, are Katherine Luomala, Char Miller, Caroline Ralston, William Geddes, Michele Stephen, Tom Spear and John Waiko. I benefited greatly from an Honours course, 'Anthropology and History', run by Tom Spear and Bronwen Douglas at La Trobe University in 1980. The considerate service of librarians at the several libraries I researched at cannot go unmentioned. These libraries include the Australian National Library at Canberra, the Menzies, Crawford and Chifley Libraries at Australian National University, the Fisher Library at the University of Sydney, the Mitchell Library at Sydney and the La Trobe Library in Melbourne. Overseas I received kind assistance from librarians at the Kiribati National Archives at Bairiki, Tarawa. Yale University Library, Connecticut, kindly forwarded me microfilm. At the Bernice P. Bishop Museum, the State Archives of Hawaii, the Sinclair Library of the University of Hawaii and the Hawaiian Mission Children's Society Library, all in Honolulu, Hawaii, I received consistently good service. Mary-Jane Knight and Lela Goodell, in particular have rendered me excellent service in answering my constant queries over the last two years. I owe gratitude also to Kiope Raymond for his valuable work in the translation of Hawaiian material for me. My field work in Kiribati took place between April and September 1979 and June-July 1981. During these periods, the I Kiribati in the islands I visited, namely Butaritari, Abaiang, Tarawa, Maiana and Tabiteuea, rendered me assistance which I could not have done without. My fieldwork would have been impossible if the I Kiribati had not extended their hospitality and opened up their homes to me, and provided me with translation services and access to the people I interviewed. The life I shared with the I Kiribati in their homes in their villages is an experience I shall ever value. Members of the Kiribati Protestant Church, in particular, did much to organize and ease my visits to the outer islands of Kiribati. Towards the end of thesis production, the services of thorough proof­ readers and a reliable typist are essential. I thank Laurel Heath, Maggie Indian and Peta Gulbransen for the arduous task of proof-reading. My thanks go to Katharine Walker for the even more arduous task of typing my thesis. I also thank Valerie Lyon for the provision of maps in this thesis. SUMMARY In the late nineteenth century, a diverse group of people were to be found on the coral atolls of the Gilbert Islands. These people included, besides the Islanders themselves, English, American and Chinese traders, American, native Hawaiian and English Protestant missionaries, French Catholic priests and English officials of the British Government. An intricate and complicated play of action took place as these people met and interacted on the tiniest of atolls straddling the Equator. Consequently the action these people took was obvious - obvious in that it was observable but not obvious in that it was understood. The meaning the actors gave it was often misinterpreted or completely lost. The thesis focuses on one act from that play - the advent of American and native Hawaiian Protestant missionaries who first came to the Gilbert Islands in 1857. Hence representatives from three distinct cultures, American, Hawaiian and Gilbertese, met and interacted in the Gilbert Islands through American Protestant mission contact. The focus of the thesis is on the life of Hiram Bingham Jr., son of one of the original Boston Protestant missionaries to Hawaii, who was to become the pioneer missionary to the Gilbert Islands in November 1857. The tensions within Bingham Jr. himself are explored. On one level, there was the choice between becoming a man of wealth and power or becoming a man of God. On another level, Bingham faced a dilemma in either following his father's footsteps and living a secure life in Hawaii as a pastor or in making a name for himself as pioneer missionary in the harsh environment of the Gilbert Islands. On yet another level, Bingham had to decide between his yearnings for commendation from his father and the Mission Board at Boston and his desire to do exactly what he wanted. Bingham, in fact, became a missionary, went to the Gilbert Islands and ran the mission there to his own design and desire. Like so many other Europeans or Americans, Bingham repudiated the desire for a predictable life in a familiar setting and opted to make his fame in little-known islands of the Pacific. He would become a ’first' even more than his father who, after all, had travelled to Hawaii as part of a group. Bingham was hungry for success. Most Islanders on Abaiang and Tarawa saw little relevance in the particular type of Christianity that Bingham espoused and attempted to convey to them. For his part, Bingham had scant respect for them. They were interested in war and power struggles; he was interested in establishing a holy government which ruled for the common good. The Hawaiian missionaries were mid-way between their own fast disappearing culture and espousal of the white man's ways. They vainly attempted to mediate between the Islanders in the Gilberts and Bingham. The Islanders therefore confronted at least two different interpretations of Christianity: that of Bingham and that of the Hawaiians. So began a triangular set of relationships fraught with misunderstanding. The mission was a fiasco as a means of Christian conversion. Yet it nurtured changes in the various islands of the Gilberts. Different concepts on organization of society, identity, time, space and knowledge were presented to the Islanders. Many adopted new ways. These modifications paved the way for the establishment of the British Protectorate in 1892. Bingham saw all change as progress, and noting the changes occurring in the Gilbert Islands, attributed it all to his mission and refused to concede defeat. GLOSSARY aba a defined plot of land te aba n tinaba the land from tinaba - see tinaba Anti spirit(s) Anti-ma-aomata half-spirit, half-human; denotes a particular period of history Anti Tioba the spirit Jehovah - a cult aomata man (human) arobai serf, servant atua the totem of the Anti babai Cyrtosperma chamissonis: a large tuberous plant which grows in stagnant water; akin to Taro in appearance (te) baba na aine women's association bakatibu ancestor bangota sacred place, shrine, used for spirit worship or sorcery boti literally, the specific seating place of each lineage within the maneaba. A term used to denote the lineage through the father (te) buaka real war buakonikai bush land(s) bubuti solicitation of goods or services, with the implication of reciprocity eiviki relationship, sometimes involving sexual intercourse, between a man and his wife's sisters and (in some cases) cousins; or a woman and the brothers and cousins of her husband ibonga sorcerers