Chapter 4. Lapérouse, the Ignoble Savage, and the Europeans as ‘spirits’

At the first meeting at sea, in the Manu’a group, the Samoans gave ‘some twenty coconuts and two blue sultana hens’. In the same way as the Dutch in 1722, the French only understood the transaction as ‘a little barter with us’. This is why they were not only rather surprised ‘to obtain so little’, but why they also became immediately convinced that the Samoans ‘were, like all the South Sea islanders, untrustworthy in their trade’. This judgement was made because the Frenchmen noticed that, several times, the Samoans took the goods handed to them and rowed away as ‘thieves’, ‘without handing over the agreed compensation. In truth these thefts were of minor importance and a few bead necklaces with small pieces of red cloth were hardly worth complaining about’ (Dunmore ed. 1995: 387). Circumscribed by their vision of ‘barter’ and ‘compensation’, the French could only interpret the attitude of these Samoans as ‘theft’. Hence the negative conclusion: ‘untrustworthy in their trade’. The French were quite unable to conceive that, from their perspective, the Samoans were undoubtedly making offerings to these Papālagi and were glad to receive gifts—and even sacred gifts since these objects (the beads and the red cloth) were so highly prized, as we already know from Roggeveen’s and Bougainville’s narratives.

From the Spanish visits in the 16^th century up until the various visits in the mid-19^th century, the ‘South Sea islanders’ were categorised as ‘thieves’ by the Europeans. They could make no other interpretation of the fact that the islanders received from their visitors—and often seized for themselves when they climbed on board—a number of Papālagi objects and hastily jumped into the water or rowed away with their pickings. They could not imagine that this behaviour of seizing and snatching was in line with the mythological and ritual structure of the annual raid that the people perpetrated on the first fruits and on all signs of life send by the gods. The goods of the Papālagi were signs of life and fertility, but they had to be snatched because, in the whole of pre-Christian Polynesia, gods always had to be forced to surrender a part of their powers to human beings as they would not do this willingly. In Tonga, Tahiti, Hawaii and Aotearoa-New Zealand, the festive cycle linked to the seasons always included a ritual raid on the first fruits.^[1] Kava and cloth

Shortly afterwards, the French noticed that a speech was addressed to them: ‘an elderly Indian’s harangue, who was holding a branch of kava in his hand and making a fairly lengthy speech’ (ibid.: 388). Lapérouse’s identification of the branch must have been accurate because, as we shall see, Vaujuas’s report on the events in Tutuila also clearly mentions that the branches of Piper methysticum were used to welcome the French. This gesture on the part of the Samoans proves to us beyond any doubt that their attitude towards the Papālagi was an attitude of offering and not of bartering. From 19^th-century and recent sources, we know that in Samoa a branch of kava was and is handed over only within the most ceremonial contexts, and then only to highly revered superiors: to sacred chiefs of the village or chiefs visiting from another village.

How did the French respond? By ‘throwing him a few pieces of cloth’ (ibid.) For them it was a way of showing thanks for what they took as a welcome and ‘a sign of peace’. Lapérouse explains that he knew from his previous reading of ‘several accounts of voyages’ that such a presentation (the presentation of any kind of branch) was a sign of peace. Although he does not specify, he may have referred to Bougainville’s and Cook’s accounts relating to Tahiti, where the presentation of ‘green branches’ (mostly young banana trees) had been interpreted by the voyagers in that way. We can imagine that the Samoans, too, saw some logic in the transaction. It so happens that, according to their custom, the presentation of a branch of kava to the sacred chiefs was and is reciprocated with gifts of cloth (fine mats and barkcloth).

Later on more canoes came ‘to offer new exchanges’: ‘five hens, several items of their clothing, six sultana hens, a small pig, but above all the most charming turtle dove we had ever seen… [there follows a detailed description] this little animal was tame, ate in your hand and from your mouth’ (p. 389). The description, which is quite precise, corresponds exactly to the multi-coloured fruit dove Ptilinopus Perousii (as it was named by the naturalist of Wilkes’s expedition in 1838 with due reference to Lapérouse [ibid.: note 2]): it is the Samoan manumā (also called manulua and close to the manutagi). Again, the gift of this tame dove shows us the way in which the Samoans interpreted the nature of their visitors. From what we know in later years, this animal was restricted to high chiefs, being used by them as a sacred pet—these birds represented the link between gods and humans—and not as food.

Lapérouse adds, rather surprisingly, that his officer M. de Langle ‘bought two dogs from the Indians, which were judged very tasty’ (p. 390). Unlike the previous items, dogs were not used as gifts between Samoans (again, as far as we can judge from the 19^th-century sources). But, through the Tongans, and from everything which had been passed on to them concerning the recent visits of the Papālagi (who came from Tahiti and who used only Tahitian words; Lapérouse did so himself, see p. 388), the Samoans may have known that, according to Tahitian custom, the gift of a dog was welcomed (we shall see another occurrence of this during the visit of Kotzebue).

A final note about the contacts in the Manu’a waters brings us back to an observation made by Bougainville: ‘we never persuaded them to accept our axes or any iron tool and they preferred a few glass beads which could be of no practical use to them to anything we offered by way of cloth or iron’ (p. 390). Lapérouse is of course wrong to combine iron and ‘cloth’: his own observations and Bougainville’s account had shown how much European ‘cloth’, and certainly the highly prized red cloth, was appreciated by the Samoans. But the remark about the lack of interest in iron, in comparison with the great interest in glass beads, is consistent with the observations made by Roggeveen and Bougainville.

Lapérouse adds finally that

Here again we find the barter theme: they ‘sold us…’. We note, too, that Lapérouse follows Bougainville in devaluing Samoan barkcloth in comparison to the Tahitian barkcloth. From an ethnographic perspective, we can note that, among Samoans in 1787 (as will be observed in other Polynesian cultures), coconut oil was a valued offering as part of a category of gifts used to wrap up the body (‘cloth’: fine mats, barkcloth) and to make the body shine (which was pleasing to the gods). Indeed, later ethnographic information recorded in Tahiti and Samoa shows that cloth and oil were given to gods, to ancestors and—in Samoa—to the bridegroom’s family during the marriage ceremony.