Read an Excerpt
Grass Huts and Warehouses
Pacific Beach Communities of the Nineteenth Century
By Caroline Ralston University of Queensland Press
Copyright © 1978 Caroline Ralston
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-921902-32-1
CHAPTER 1
Contact and Early Trade
Contact in the Pacific between islander and white was prolonged over a period of three centuries, during which time explorers discovered a number of islands, established satisfactory trading relations with some, and slowly increased the store of European knowledge about the Pacific. The kind of reception offered these first visitors was largely determined by certain cultural values and characteristics within the island societies, not all of which welcomed Europeans or their goods. It was not until the nineteenth century that sustained European trade and the development of beach communities in the islands began, the latter being heavily dependent on the former and also on the attitudes of the island hosts.
In Polynesia, the focus of this study, despite the dispersion and number of islands, culture and language were very similar. Politically the Polynesians were organised into hierarchical systems, which made it possible for a paramount chief to consolidate his authority over a numerous population inhabiting a comparatively large land area. This resulted in a wide network of loyalties and kinship relations and a relatively open political structure in which strangers of island origins were usually readily assimilated. Social and political styles of life in Micronesia had much in common with those of Polynesia, but limitations of land and population prevented the development of Micronesian chieftainship on the levels possible in Polynesia. By contrast in Melanesia, where a large number of isolated, culturally and linguistically distinct tribes developed, the small politically autonomous village units fostered a strong sense of group identity and treated any outsider as strange and almost always hostile. There was seldom a permanent superstructure of authority to encourage co-operation between the Melanesian 'big men', who won their positions by personal qualities and effort, and maintained only an unstable domination over their small communities. Clearly the reception of a stranger, island or white, would have been very different in Melanesia compared with either Polynesia or Micronesia.
From oral traditions, from European accounts of early post-contact times, and from the behaviour of the inhabitants on the Polynesian outlier islands, Rennell, Bellona, Tikopia and Kapinga-marangi, it is possible to establish a picture of the pre-contact patterns of Polynesian hospitality and receptivity. At no time had their world been a closed one. Islanders set out by canoe to find new homes or were swept away by sudden storms, and their reception and settlement on other inhabited islands were facilitated by the well developed social mechanisms in Polynesian culture for the assimilation of strangers: in particular adoption and marriage. Long before European contact, Tuamotuans were happily settled in Tahiti, and a regular link between the two groups was established. Similarly Fijians and Wallis islanders, who had been long resident in Savaii, were found living there peacefully when the first Europeans arrived. From the time of contact onwards the Europeans collected tales of the treatment of indigenous strangers arriving at the islands. While William Mariner was in Tonga between 1806 and 1808, the son and heir of the Tongan chief, Finau, returned from Samoa, where he had lived for five years and acquired two Samoan wives. A Tahitian woman arrived in Rarotonga after the explorers and first missionaries had landed on her native island, and thus was able to tell her hosts about the white men, their manufactured goods, and their new religion. The Rarotongans were greatly impressed by her stories and readily accepted her into their society. All these strangers, who are only a representative sample of a much larger group, were accepted into the social milieu of their hosts' community and assimilated without any major dislocation of the existing structure.
Further from the Polynesian outlier islands, where until quite recently Polynesian communities still functioned along largely traditional lines, the treatment of incoming strangers has been well documented by anthropologists. Drifted canoes, which were ardently prayed for among the Rennellese, were believed to have been sent by the gods as gifts to particular individuals, whose duty it was to honour the visitors with food distribution rituals. Even castaways who behaved arrogantly were tolerated on Rennell and allowed to return home, which all but two arrivals seem to have done. Wives, usually of high rank, were offered to strangers on Kapingamarangi and Tikopia, and as a consequence present-day families trace their ancestry back to survivors from various drifted canoes. On Kapingamarangi a Gilbertese arrived whose cannibal habits were only apparent later, after a number of children had disappeared. Although the Kapingamarangi wanted to kill him he was eventually allowed to live on condition that he left the island. From the legendary tales of Tikopia it is clear that a stranger was usually given a specific kinship title, land and ritual privileges. The Bellonese have no traditions of assigning specific kinship roles to arriving strangers, who usually were called just 'friend'. Kinship terms were restricted exclusively to the Bellonese and Rennellese, but the bond of friendship was considered by the Bellonese almost as strong as kin ties — special friends had no secrets, and shared food and belongings without asking permission.
From the sources cited above, it would appear that hospitality was an established cultural characteristic of the Polynesians, but there is no reason to believe that this was so on islands where the necessities of life were only marginally supplied. On the coral atolls, for example, flotsam and jetsam were a major source of potentially useful materials, and were jealously sought after by all the inhabitants. While timber, pumice and other useful objects were highly coveted, the arrival of human migrants or drift voyagers was often a source of embarrassment. Thus oral traditions recorded by Edward Robarts in the early nineteenth century claim that the Marquesans landing on the Tuamotus were normally killed. Limited food, and frequently water supplies, combined with smaller, less elaborate political systems, conditioned the atoll dwellers' response to strangers who sometimes threatened their very existence.
On the high islands where, under normal conditions, considerations of available food and water did not influence the inhabitants' response to new arrivals, the Polynesians had evolved elaborate standards of hospitality of which their treatment of strangers formed a part. Material and sexual generosity and a willingness to accommodate newcomers were typical of Polynesian life in many areas. These characteristics could, however, be overridden if the islanders were threatened by famine or feared disease, but more frequently they were prompted to welcome strangers in their midst, and through their well established social mechanisms of adoption and marriage to assimilate them. Such traits augured well for the incoming European. But it cannot be assumed that the relative ease with which strangers of island origins were absorbed into another society, culturally similar to their own, would be possible in the case of a European of an entirely different racial and cultural background. The very appearance of a European amounted to a cultural shock for the Polynesians, who firmly believed that nothing lay beyond their island world. However, if the initial fear and suspicion on both sides could be overcome, Polynesian culture possessed the social values and attitudes, as well as the necessary institutions, to mediate the induction of alien individuals into it.
Balboa looked out across the Pacific in September 1513 but the honour of being the first European to sail upon it fell to Magellan in November 1520. From then until the end of the seventeenth century the Spanish, later succeeded by the Dutch, undertook sporadic exploratory voyages. At the beginning of the eighteenth century the majority of islands had still to be discovered by Europeans, but by its close the myth of the Great South Continent had finally been dispelled and all the major island groups of the Pacific were known to the Western world. Credit for this century of exploration belonged to the English; ultimately to Cook, whose three voyages of discovery between 1768 and 1779 left the Pacific a mare cognito. He had, however, been preceded by the Dutchman, Roggeveen, early in the eighteenth century, and later by Byron, Wallis, Carteret and the Frenchman Bougainville, all of whom sailed in the Pacific between 1761 and 1769. A number of small islands and many reefs remained to be discovered after Cook but by 1780 enough was known of the Pacific, its islands and resources, to tempt the first pioneer traders to hazard their ships and cargoes within its bounds.
Before the 1760s contact between the islanders and the Europeans was infrequent and largely superficial, except for Mendaña's disastrous second voyage. The northerly routes taken by the Spanish across the Pacific in both directions had kept them at a distance from most well populated islands, until in July 1595 Mendaña discovered the Marquesas. After a visit of eight or nine days at least 200 inhabitants had been killed, either by orders from Mendaña or casually by the soldier-settlers on board. Between September and November of the same year the inhabitants of Santa Cruz, where Mendaña attempted to establish a colony, suffered similar slaughter. With this exception, the trans- Pacific voyagers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were primarily interested in crossing the ocean to the Asian markets as fast and as safely as possible.
But at the end of the Seven Years War Europeans again turned their thoughts to the Pacific and, as befits people from the Age of Reason, they were as much concerned with gathering exact knowledge about the Pacific, its people and resources, as with finding the Great South Continent, or new trade routes to Asia. Vessels stayed in the islands for longer periods. For all his Arcadian raptures, Bougainville only remained at Tahiti eleven days, but Wallis was there for over a month, and Cook on his first visit to Tahiti stayed almost exactly three months, while on his second visit to Tonga he remained two and a half months.
Fresh supplies and rehabilitation of sick crew members were of first importance for all the explorers but they were also variously employed collecting botanical and zoological specimens, making astronomical observations and subjecting the island populations to a certain amount of haphazard anthropological investigation. Caution, however, dictated that the foreigners live strictly on board ship or in closely guarded camps ashore, so contact with the islanders was seldom sustained. Barter trade, which was well developed among the Polynesians, was usually brisk and easy, but it required a minimum of understanding between the two groups. Furthermore the explorers regulated bartering very closely in an attempt to ensure that sufficient fresh supplies and water were acquired before the islanders' desire for cheap manufactured articles was satiated. Until these necessities had been secured the ordinary sailors were forbidden to trade for curiosities, and their contact with island women was similarly curtailed as far as it was possible.
Before 1780 the only Europeans to have lived unprotected on the islands for any extended period were two Spanish Catholic priests left on Tahiti in 1774. Neither had the stamina or fortitude necessary for the task of evangelism and unfortunately they were too frightened of the Tahitians to establish any meaningful relationship with them. However, their interpreter Maximo Rodriquez spoke Tahitian well and gained the Tahitians' confidence.
The balance of power and interest between the first European visitors and the islanders was delicate. Ostensibly the explorers were dependent on the island populations for food, water and women, but the islanders found that their ability to supply these wants did not give them licence to steal. Until fresh supplies had been loaded most Europeans were reluctant to display their superior military strength whatever the provocation, and many times the provocation was great. Any article lying unattached was subject to removal by a sleight of hand that the foreigners had to marvel at, however exasperated they became. Wallis, however, in 1767, was forced to repel the Tahitians' determined attempts to manipulate the contact situation to their own advantage and to acquire whatever European property they could. Only after two separate conflicts, during which about 100 Tahitians were killed, was Wallis able to convince them that military power lay in his hands. Both Bougainville and Cook, who visited in the following year, benefited from Wallis's demonstration of strength, which was not soon forgotten among the Tahitians. Whether the Europeans resorted to their cannons or not to regulate trade, there were still conflicting interests between the two groups. The foreigners' continued demands, not only for daily provisions but also for stock for the coming months at sea, put an enormous strain on an island's resources. However genuine their hospitality and desire for European goods, islanders at times faced the threat of famine if the foreigners did not sail away. The unexpected arrival of such numbers (sometimes as many as 200 men) was not something to which the Polynesians were accustomed. Previously, arrivals had been limited to, at most, the holding capacity of one or two canoes, except for the ariori, the company of chiefly persons who travelled throughout the Society Islands staging elaborate festivals for the god Oro, but their visits were anticipated and carefully planned for. The explorers found that the easy relations which were usually established in the first few days of contact often deteriorated if their sojourns were prolonged, and that their hosts became anxious to know when they would depart. Pressure on diminishing food supplies and acts of racist brutality by sailors and sometimes officers, made it increasingly difficult for even the most humanitarian captain or benign Polynesian host to keep the mounting tension at non-violent levels. Polynesians desired Western goods (some of them to the extent that they attempted to capture vessels when legitimate trading avenues closed) but when their own survival was at stake, they were glad to see the foreigners go. Despite the Europeans' seemingly miraculous powers the islanders were not overwhelmed by what the whites considered their superior civilisation. In 1802, while the Tahitians set a high value on such European goods as they found useful within the context of their own culture, they still considered their island and civilisation unsurpassed and liked to believe that the Europeans were dependent on them for food and women.
The islanders had no opportunity to gain a rational insight into European culture, most aspects of which, beyond the foreigners' basic needs, were unintelligible to them. Chances for the Europeans to acquire some understanding of the island world were greater but their comprehension was limited by the brevity of their visits and the prejudices and beliefs they brought with them from the West. The superficial nature of this early contact, plus the inbuilt preconceptions many Europeans brought with them of the noble savage and an age of innocence, coloured their vision to such an extent that many described island life in terms of ideal Utopian societies. Chiefly tyranny, infanticide and human sacrifice failed to dispel their preconceived illusions. Not until the death of Cook, the massacre of La Pérouse's crew and the rise of militant evangelism did the image begin to fade.
The pattern of predominantly easy race relations established during this period cannot be considered as a norm which was later undermined by treachery on either or both sides. The generosity and hospitality of the majority of Polynesians were established cultural habits which persisted despite, or perhaps at times because of, their underlying fear and sometimes awe of the explorers. Mutual understanding was at a minimum, and later more intensive relations were to reveal, on both sides, attitudes, behaviour and systems of belief alien and often inexplicable in terms of the other culture. The novelty and the often festive atmosphere surrounding the early European visits inevitably gave way to suspicion and disappointment on more frequent and sustained contact. Total misunderstanding of motivation and intention caused tensions between the two races from the first contact, but even when this degenerated into violence and fatality, it was usually still possible to re-establish working relations once the Europeans had made clear their superior strength. More stable or intelligible contact was not possible, however, until the Europeans settled permanently in the islands. Through the explorers the islanders were made aware of the existence of an alien race utterly dissimilar to their own and were forced to make the first tentative accommodation to a society possessing other cultural values and procedures, but fundamental changes in island life did not occur until foreign traders and settlers appeared in the Pacific.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Grass Huts and Warehouses by Caroline Ralston. Copyright © 1978 Caroline Ralston. Excerpted by permission of University of Queensland Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
