imfcm fehk, 1 b . ,.' " * l Sm, , -.< äflj -Ff r.*^ ¥ ^ m / h i ^ r w ljt ■ ft' ■ ■ p 8fi > “*% A \ iß^jÄ . 1 "jSSm V * ■P* f 4 md ‘ 'Jt W W f l I ^ ■ V 6 ' j p w ~ i I V A U . GROUP - 10“ - 3 Q 0 o q ' Sunäav I. rPLBASS RETURN 7 _ . _......._ ■ K.ERMADEC • ' GROUP I EDiiOVJAL DEPARTMENT , Santiago y l / CHILE ( / »iM tiä yilOtiM yNiV£fiS!TV[i i Auckland i*** -I - * * »■% If* _40° \ / n e w ) 40»- RECOMMENDED RETi f l D S O ' /ZEA LA N D f PUBLICATION DATE ■H d M 180° 160° 140° 120° KK)0 80° I__ I | % Main Routes Gomez (2); Urmeneta y Ramos; Barbara 10 Guillermo: from Rapa. Notes Gomez (repatriation voyage). 11 lose Castro: from Rapa. 1 Northern Route from Callao to or through Southern route from Easter Island to Rapa, 12 Rosa Patricia: from Rapa. 1 Routes within island groups are not shown the Marquesas and Northern Cook Groups, taken by Cora (via Mangareva); Guillermo; 13 Rosa y Carmen: from Rapa. but are detailed in Table 2. taken by Adelante (1|; Jorge Zahaza; Jost Castro; Rosa Patricia; Rosa y Carmen 14 Micaela Miranda: from Rapa. 2 Voyages (route numbers) in an easterly Manualita Costas; Trujillo; Apuiimac; (via Mangareva); Micaela Miranda; Misti; 15 Ellen Elizabeth: from Tongareva. direction are underlined. Eliza Mason; Adelante (2); Genara; Barbara Gomez 16 Dolores Carolina; Polinesia; Honorio; from 3 The return route is only shown to the last Empresa; Dolores Carolina; Polinesia; (repatriation voyage). Pukapuka. island visited, from which ships are Adelante (3); General Prim (2|; Diamant Other Routes 17 La Concepcion. presumed to have made direct to Callao, (repatriation voyage). 4 Serpiente Marina: from Easter Island. 18 Guay as. except the Adelante (1) and Empresa, 2 Easter Island route from Callao, taken by 5 Trujillo: from Manihiki. 19 Misti. which went initially to Huacho, and the Serpiente Marina; Bella Margarita; Teresa; 6 Eliza Mason: from Fatuhiva. 20 Whaler Grecian. Ellen Elizabeth, which made for General Prim (1); Cora; Carolina (1); 7 Mercedes A. de Wholey; Barbara 21 Adelante (repatriation voyage). Lambayeque. Guillermo; Hermosa Dolores; Jost Castro; Gomez (1). 22 Ellen Elizabeth (repatriation voyage). 4 The route of the Australian whaler Grecian Rosa Patricia; Rosa y Carmen; Micaela 8 Empresa: from Fatuhiva. 23 Adelante: from Tongareva. is shown thus:.......... Miranda; Rosalia; Carolina (2); Barbara 9 Cora: from Rapa. This book was published by ANU Press between 1965–1991. This republication is part of the digitisation project being carried out by Scholarly Information Services/Library and ANU Press. This project aims to make past scholarly works published by The Australian National University available to a global audience under its open-access policy. Slavers in Paradise 1 Hehe a Afora of Fakaofo: the last surviving slave (photographed in 1921). BM. To the Islanders of Polynesia, who asked for this book, and to Professor J.D. Freeman, H.E. Maude Australian National University Press Canberra 1981 Published in the Pacific Islands by The University of the South Pacific Suva, Fiji ©H.E. Maude First published 1981 This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism, or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Inquiries should be made to the publishers. National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Maude, H.E. (Henry Evans), 1906- Slavers in Paradise Bibliography. Includes index. Simultaneously published: Stanford, Calif. Stanford University Press. ISBN 0 7081 1607 8. ISBN 0 7081 1608 6 (pbk.). 1. Alien labor, Polynesian—Peru—History 2. Contract labor—Peru. 3. Labor and laboring classes—Polynesia—History. I. Title. 331.6'2'96085 To the Islanders of Polynesia, who asked for this book, and to Professor J.D. Freeman, whose generous help ensured its production PREFACE During World War II, when working for the now defunct Western Pacific High Commission, it was my good fortune to visit twenty- seven of the Central and Eastern Pacific Islands mentioned in this work. It was a remote and isolated world hard to visualise in these hur­ ried times: a world of cloud-capped volcanic islands and ethereal coral atolls—all seemingly asleep, for normal shipping services had long ceased and commercial flying was still a dream of the future. Only the inter-island schooners still plied their erratic routes at unpredictable times; and fortunately for me it was possible to reach their orbits from my headquarters at Suva by boarding an American Army plane which operated a fortnightly 'milk run' from Pearl Har­ bour via Palmyra, Christmas Island, Borabora and Aitutaki to Pago Pago. From lovely Aitutaki I was able to sail by schooner through the Southern Cooks and Australs to Pitcairn and then up via the Gambiers and Tuamotus to Tahiti; and from thence through the Line Islands and Northern Cooks, to be picked up again from a palm-girdled lagoon not far from Suwarrow by a New Zealand Air Force plane, and taken to Samoa. It was during this wandering and rather euphoric period that I came to know the Polynesian islanders, and particularly the atoll dwellers, as I have never been privileged to before or since. I suppose that many of the atolls with their mellifluous names—Manihiki, Rakahanga, Pukapuka, Tongareva—were as little visited then as during the time of the Peruvian raids, while the leisurely way of life on them had hardly changed in the eighty years that had elapsed. At all events it was at this time that I was asked to tell the story of what had happened to their great-grandparents and great great-grand­ parents who had left, duped or forced, in the holds of the barques and brigs that came sailing from the east. To this day no one has told them what had occurred: neither government, nor missionary, nor his­ torian; all the secondary material in print is a few colourful episodes apparently culled from the pages of the Sydney Morning Herald, some sporadic notices in works on individual islands or groups and the excellent but all too brief story of Taole, the Niuean who escaped. Now I know why, for though I started collecting the primary sources, from which alone a connected narrative could be written, as long ago as 1958, the material—in English, Spanish and French— proved to be so unexpectedly abundant and yet so scattered and diffi- viii PREFACE cult of access that it has taken twenty years to complete the task, admittedly as an intermittent labour of love. Perhaps appropriately it is destined to appear on the fiftieth anniversary of the year in which my wife and I landed on our first Pacific atoll. If the Polynesian people to whom this study is dedicated have a special and personal interest in the narrative it is hoped that at the same time it may serve to fill a long-felt gap in our knowledge of both Pacific and Latin American history, linking for a brief period the fortunes and misfortunes of two utterly dissimilar societies. For the majority of readers, however, it will be read simply as a contribution to island literature: as the story of the most dramatic region-wide conflict between human greed and bewildered innocence ever to occur in the romantic setting of the South Seas. FEE. Maude Canberra, Australia 1 July 1980 CONTENTS Preface vii Acknowledgments ix Abbreviations xv Introduction Currency Values I Peruvians in Polynesia 1 The Peruvian Background 1 2 Tongareva Tryout 5 3 The Easter Island Trinket Trade 12 4 Mangareva and the Tuamotus: Follies and Failures 21 5 Brandy for the Marquesans 31 6 Rapa and the Southern Cooks: the Fleet sails West 39 7 Blackbirding in the Northern Cooks 45 8 Niue and the Samoan Islands 55 9 Depopulating the Tokelaus 63 10 Kidnapping for God in Tuvalu 74 II Tonga: the Tale of the Hobart Whaler Grecian 83 12 Micronesian Afterthought: Ellen Elizabeth in the Gilberts 88 13 The View from Tahiti 92 11 Polynesians in Peru 14 Journey to Servitude 109 15 Death on Sunday 115 16 Callao Contracts 122 17 Bondage in Peru 129 18 Political Pressures 139 19 De Lesseps v. Ribeyro: Collecting the Survivors 150 20 Repatriation: the Final Tragedy 159 21 Settling Up and Settling In 165 22 Crisis in the Atolls 170 23 After the Storm 179 Appendix 185 Notes 195 Bibliography 223 Index 233 PLATES 1 Hehe a Afora, the last surviving slave Frontispiece 2 A Manihiki church 7 3 Omoka Village, Tongareva 10 4 Hangaroa Bay, Easter Island 16 5 Rikitea on Mangareva 23 6 Father Honore Laval 24 7 A nineteenth century brig 27 8 An aged Tuamotu islander 28 9 Hatiheu Bay, Nukuhiva 33 10 Controleur Bay from the Taipi Valley 34 11 Marquesans at home 36 12 Ahurei Bay, Rapa 40 13 A nineteenth century schooner 41 14 Atiu Island 43 15 The ariki Numatangani of Mangaia 44 16 George Ellis of Manihiki 47 17 Loto village, Pukapuka 48 18 The first John Williams 52 19 Niue coastal scene 55 20 A nineteenth century barque 56 21 A Niuean in 1862 58 22 Apia in the mid-nineteenth century 59 23 An encounter in Samoan waters 61 24 The village on Fakaofo 66 25 Fakaofo islanders 67 26 Atafu from the air 69 27 Churchwomen of Atafu 72 28 Nukulaelae islanders 77 29 Women and children of Funafuti 78 30 Jack O'Brien of Funafuti 79 31 'Ata Island 85 32 A Gilbertese family in 1851 89 33 Governor Gaultier de la Richerie 93 34 Proclamation to the chiefs of the Tuamotu Islands 94 35 Queen Pomare of Tahiti 96 36 Papeete in the mid-nineteenth century 100 37 The roadstead at Papeete 102 38 Denham Bay, Sunday Island 117 39 Pitcairn Island 119 40 The Port of Callao 122 41 A girl from the atolls 128 42 Shipping off the Chincha Islands 135 43 Chincha Islands guano headquarters 138 44 Jose Gregorio Paz Soldän 143 45 Juan Antonio Ribeyro 145 46 Edmond de Lesseps 151 47 Pakomio Maori of Easter Island 168 48 An atoll church service 175 49 Teau of Rapa and the old men of Fakaofo 183 The abbreviations following captions indicate the libraries from which the photographs of illustrations were obtained: BM from the B.P.