Table of Contents
With the arrival of Jean-François de Galaup de Lapérouse we come to the first Samoan/European contact on land, and to the first of the two authors who are Williamson’s and Côté’s key witnesses for the theory of a free sex pre-marital life among Samoan girls. We saw in the Introduction how Côté found to be crucial Williamson’s statement that ‘Lapérouse tells us that girls were, before marriage, mistresses of their own favours, and their complaisance did not dishonour them’. Indeed, as regards this quotation, as for all others from Lapérouse in his volumes on Polynesia, Williamson was accurate. The question, though, is why he had noted that very passage, among dozens of pages from Lapérouse’s narrative. Lapérouse did indeed write this very sentence in his journal. It can be found in a concluding part of his narrative of his encounter with the Samoan people. But the preceding lines, omitted by Williamson (and apparently not checked by Côté), contain a surprise and lead us to a very different conclusion: young and weeping girls were forcibly dragged by adults into a chiefly house, where they were held firmly in the arms of an elder and sexually offered to the French. It seems that in Williamson’s case the Western myth of Polynesian sexuality had once again informed the selection of ideas just as it did at much the same time for Margaret Mead. Actually the myth was already at work in Lapérouse’s case: influenced by his reading of Bougainville’s chapter on ‘New Cythera’ (Tahiti), Lapérouse misinterpreted in terms of female ‘favours’ what he saw (and/or what he had been told by some of his officers) during his brief landing in Samoa.
Lapérouse had the commendable habit of sending a copy of his journal to France from his main ports of call. Thus, although he and all his expedition disappeared in 1788 in the Solomons (Vanikoro) (shipwrecked on a reef in a storm; no survivors were ever found and material traces of the expedition were not discovered until forty years later), the French Navy was in possession of the journal of the expedition, from early 1786 when Lapérouse entered the Pacific until his last call at Botany Bay in January and February 1788, thus shortly after his passage through the Samoan islands in December 1787. His journal was published with some alterations by French authorities in 1797 (edited by Général Millet-Mureau). In 1985, a scholarly edition was published by John Dunmore of Massey University and Maurice de Brossard of the French Navy and the Académie de marine. The editors were able to go back to the original manuscript. An English translation was published by Dunmore in 1994 (volume 1) and 1995 (volume 2).[1]
After his chapter describing daily events, Lapérouse wrote a concluding chapter describing his encounter with the Samoans. His summary of the contents, given on the first page of the chapter, says that his remarks will bear ‘on the customs and practices of these people, their crafts and the country’s products. Basis of a belief that they do not all share the same origin…’ ([Lapérouse] Dunmore ed. 1995: 415). Lapérouse speaks first of the names and position of the islands, and refers first of all to Bougainville’s comments. (We thus know that Lapérouse had carefully read the narrative of Bougainville’s circumnavigation of 1766-9). Then he summarises Roggeveen’s voyage from his reading of Behrens’s narrative through the quotations that are in ‘Président de Brosses’’s work of 1756. This was the great compilation, used by all captains of the second half of the 18th century.[2] Lapérouse then proceeds to describe the physical appearance of Samoan men, ‘the tallest and most robustly built we have met’, and how they are ‘painted or tattooed in such a way that one could almost believe they are clothed’ (Dunmore ed. 1995: 419). Then he describes the women (we shall return to the passage in its entirety). His last lines about Samoan ‘women’ concern the ‘girls’ and contain the words highlighted by Côté via Williamson: Whatever navigators who preceded us might say, I am convinced that at least in the Navigators Islands girls are mistresses of their own favours before marriage, their complaisance casts no dishonour on them, and it is more likely that when they marry they are under no obligation to account for their past behaviour. But I have no doubt that they are required to show more restraint when they are married (ibid.: 420).[3]
Lapérouse then goes on to describe ‘crafts’, notes how the art of plaiting fine mats is prevalent in comparison with making barkcloth (called in Samoan siapo), carefully describes the houses,[4] then tries to characterise the language and the origin of the Samoans.
We see that his final sentence about ‘girls as mistresses of their own favours’ is presented as a sheer hypothesis: ‘Whatever navigators who preceded us might say’ (i.e., ‘even if prior navigators said nothing of the kind’; Lapérouse is referring of course to Bougainville’s and Behrens’s accounts), ‘I am convinced…’, ‘it is more likely…’, ‘I have no doubt…’. Why was he ‘convinced’? One reason is of course his reaction to certain events. We shall return to this in what follows. But there may have been a more general reason: Lapérouse assimilated the Samoans to the Tahitians and thus interpreted everything in a biased way. The assimilation followed two complementary paths. Firstly, Lapérouse reflected on the language area and noted a certain unity. Secondly, as to the women and girls, he had in mind Bougainville’s narrative recounting the numerous ‘Venuses’ seen in ‘New Cythera’.
[1] Dening (1998: 41-7) has emphasised the great achievement that these publications represent, and the contribution that they make to the researches of ethnohistorians of the Pacific.
[2] In 1756, Charles de Brosses, a jurist, geographer, President of the Parliament of Dijon in Burgundy, and a reader of all prior voyagers’ accounts (in all languages), had published two large volumes that were a compilation and a study of these previous voyages in the Pacific (de Brosses 1756; Ryan 2002).
[3] Quoiqu’en puissent dire les voyageurs qui nous ont précédés je suis convaincu qu’au moins dans les isles des Navigateurs les jeunes filles avant d’être mariées sont maîtresses de leurs faveurs, que leur complaisance ne les déshonore pas, il est plus vraisemblable qu’en se mariant elles n’ont aucun compte à rendre de leur conduite passée. Mais je ne doute pas quelles ne soient obligées à plus de réserve lorsqu’elles ont un mari ([Lapérouse] Dunmore and de Brossard eds, 1985: II: 477).
[4] Although his general conclusion is that Samoans ‘spend their days in idleness or engaged in tasks that have no other purpose than their clothing and their luxury’, Lapérouse admired ‘the elegant shapes of their houses… axes made of a very fine and very compact basalt shaped into adzes; and they sold us for a few glass beads wooden dishes affixed to three feet holding them up like a tripod and which seemed to be painted with the finest varnish…they make some paper-cloth (étoffe-papier) similar to that of the Society and Friendly Islands; they sold us several lengths of a single reddish-brown colour. It seems that they do not prize it very much and have little use for it, the women prefer mats (nattes) that are extremely well plaited and I saw only two or three men whom I took to be chiefs who had instead of a grass skirt a length of material (une pièce de toile) wrapped around them like a skirt, this cloth is woven with a true thread drawn no doubt from some ligneous plant, like a nettle or flax, it is made without a shuttle and the threads are woven through absolutely as with the mats, this cloth has both the suppleness and the strength of our own, is very suitable for their canoe sails and cannot be compared in respect of its advantages to the paper cloth of the other islands which they also manufacture but seem to disdain’ (Dunmore ed. 1995 : 420-1 ; Dunmore and de Brossard eds, 1985 : II : 477-8). His description of the house he was taken to during his landing of 10 December (see below) is very precise and corresponds exactly to what we know about a fale tele from 19th-century sources. The floor was made of pebbles, the Samoans ‘stretched out the finest and freshest mats on the ground’ to welcome the French. ‘I went into the best hut which presumably belonged to the chief and was extremely surprised to find a vast latticed room as well and indeed better made than any in the environs of Paris. The best architect could not have given a more elegant curve to the two ends of the ellipse ending this hut, a row of columns five feet from each other ran along the edge, these columns were only tree trunks very elaborately worked between which the Indians had placed some fine mats that could be raised or lowered with ropes like our roller-blinds and arranged with the utmost skill like fish scales, the rest of the house was covered with cononut-tree leaves’ (p. 394).