The killings of that fateful 11 December provoked a century of discussions which sought an explanation for the outbreak of violence (Krämer ibid.; Linnekin 1991) and also contributed to the creation of the image of the Ignoble Savage . I have already cited Lapérouse’s words describing the Samoa he had seen on his first landing: the tone was entirely in the vein of Bougainville’s vision of the Noble Savage. But, after the attack at the cove, the impression now conveyed was somewhat different. It was not so much that the Garden of Eden and Land of Abundance theme was abandoned but, rather, that the philosophical conclusions about the ‘Savage’ which could be drawn from it were different. Jocelyn Linnekin has drawn our attention to a letter written by Lapérouse in Botany Bay two months later:
I am… a thousand times more angry with the philosophers, who so enthusiastically extol savage nations, than with the savages themselves… Lamanon [the naturalist of the expedition, who was among the 11 dead]…, told me, the evening before his death, that these men were better than ourselves… A navigator… ought to consider the savages as enemies… whom, without sufficient reason, it would be… barbarous to destroy; but whose hostile attempts he has a right to prevent (Linnekin 1991: 8).
Lapérouse thereby inaugurated the transformation of Bougainville’s stereotype of the Noble Savage into an equally stereotyped Ignoble Savage, whose image was to persist for many decades. Already, in his narrative, Lapérouse wrote that right after leaving Tutuila where the ‘massacre’ occurred, he decided to abandon his previous interest in the ‘history’ (the customs) of the Samoans and to avoid any further landing in the Samoan archipelago:
I decided that I would land only at Botany Bay in New Holland where I proposed to build the longboat I had on board. But for the advancement of geography I felt that I ought to explore the various islands [of the Samoan group] I would come upon, accurately determine their latitude and longitude, communicate with these people through their canoes which, laden with foodstuffs, travel two or three leagues from the coast to trade with vessels, and I left to others the task of writing their history which like that of all barbarous people is of slight interest. A 24-hour stay with an account of our misfortunes is sufficient to describe their atrocious ways, their crafts and the products of one of the most beautiful countries of the world (Dunmore ed. 1995: 405).
The tone was left for posterity: Samoans are barbarians with ‘atrocious ways’ but they nonetheless inhabit a ‘most beautiful country’.
Linnekin’s study of 1991 also showed clearly how Lapérouse’s complete narrative, published in France in 1797, was widely read in Europe and immediately translated into several languages. One of the consequences was the publication of numerous fictional or biographical writings about Lapérouse which were in great demand among the general public—the complete disappearance of the expedition in 1788 had created an aura of mystery around the French captain which was to last for forty years. All of this literature of course accorded a central place to the ‘massacre’ in Tutuila, and heavily exploited Lapérouse’s theme of a contrast between a beautiful country and its ferocious inhabitants (Linnekin 1991: 11 and ff.). This literary tradition began at the beginning of the 19th century and continued for fifty years.
But, after the late 1840s, the interpretation of this event changed with the advent of the English missionaries. In their writings and commentaries it now appeared that the Samoans had been provoked by the French, a view which they passed on to Commodore Wilkes who visited Samoa in the period when Anglo-French rivalry was increasing in the Pacific. Furthermore, by the mid-1830s Samoa had become a common port of call for commercial vessels and had thus acquired a reputation as a peaceful and hospitable country. Accordingly, after this we find that the dominant theme of the Anglophone literature was that the Samoans were not to be blamed for what had occurred at the cove: they were a peaceful people, and what happened there was due to the French having shot and killed one of their number (ibid.: 21).
We have seen that the Marists of the time, even though they still held to the French explanation of Samoan greed for European goods, also inferred a kind of unfortunate escalation, from an unplanned single assault to a general attack, in a context of tension and terror (the Samoan considered the new visitors as ‘spirit’-like creatures). Among the Marists, Padel also repeated what he has been told by the Protestants: the theory of the offending Samoan group from another island. But he added a remark that could only have been invented by a French visitor. It shows us that, for the French visitors at least, the ‘massacre’ was still viewed in the mid-19th century as a recent event. Padel wrote in 1847 to his superior in France: My dear Revered Father,
… we left Taïti at the end of August and touched the first islands of the vicariat central de l’Océanie on the 7th of september [1846]; the first land we touched was the island of Tutuila; we stayed there about eight days. We were not really welcomed: our cross on the flag at the top of the mast and the presence of eight catholic priests were more than enough to distress the protestant ministers who are the masters here. Moreover our French identity was a source of fear for the natives; in this island, but in a different bay than our mooring place, Lapeyrouse’s second in command and eight or nine sailors have been massacred; hence the name of the place: baie des Assassins. Since that time, the natives always fear that the French will come back to avenge the death of their compatriots. Yet those who perpetrated this assassination are not the inhabitants of this island, but some young men of Upolu who were here to make war and who, taken by the feeling of victory as if they were drunk, massacred these men whom they found unable to defend themselves (Padel, letter of 15 April 1847, in Girard ed., 1999: III: 336; my translation).[7]
Of course, one can guess that it was the LMS missionaries, and British beachcombers working with them, who did their best to make Padel and his comrades believe that, as French people, they would not be welcomed by the ‘natives’. But apparently Padel took the bait without question.
Let us return to Lapérouse, who decided that he did not want to make any more landings or spend any more time describing the Samoans’ ‘atrocious ways’ of living. It was with this vision of the Ignoble Savage that Lapérouse left Tutuila island and sailed past Upolu and then Savai’i, following his westward route. But his comments on the contacts made at sea off the coast of these Samoan islands reveal an interesting nuance. Standing offshore from Upolu, on the morning of 14 December [we] were surrounded by numberless canoes loaded with breadfruit, coconuts, bananas, sugar cane, pigeons and sultana hens; but very few pigs... [In the afternoon, we were] opposite a very wide plain filled with houses from the hilltops down to the edge of the sea … roughly in the middle of the island … The sea was filled with canoes … As there were women and children among them it was almost a sure sign that they harboured no evil intentions, but we had strong reasons not to trust in it any longer … they preferred a single bead to an axe or a six-inch nail. Among a fairly large number of women I noticed two or three who were very pretty and one could have thought had served as a model for the charming drawing of the Present Bearer of Cook’s third voyage, their hair was adorned with flowers and a green ribbon like a head-band plaited with grass and moss,[8] their shape was elegant, their arms rounded and very well proportioned, their eyes, their features, their movement spoke of gentleness whereas those of the men depicted ferocity and surprise. In any one sculptor study the latter would have been taken for Hercules and the young women for Diana, or her nymphs whose complexion would have been exposed for quite some time to the effects of the open air and the sun (ibid.: 412-13; my emphasis).
We can see that the Ignoble Savage type, which, after 11 December, came to dominate Lapérouse’s characterisation of the Samoans, was largely restricted to the men. Lapérouse was certainly influenced by Bougainville’s book and the narratives of Cook and Banks (as re-phrased by Hawkesworth). In his references to the Samoan women, the descriptive style continues to resemble Bougainville’s. This is another strong indication that we are entitled to take the influence of Bougainville’s views into account when we read Lapérouse’s and Vaujuas’s allusions to the ‘favours offered’ by Samoan females. Indeed, the Western ideal-type of the lascivious-but-innocent vahine, invented by Commerson in 1769 and by Bougainville in 1771, and confirmed by Hawkesworth in 1773, was the vision of Polynesian women that would overwhelm all others in the Western imagination. This was particularly true for the French, even a captain lamenting the ‘massacre’ of his men.
17 December: offshore from Savai’i, no canoes came out, probably because the French were now more distant from the coast. So ended this memorable French visit to the Samoan islands—the first encounter on land, the first time that Samoans were killed by the Papālagi, and the very start of Western misconceptions about the sexual behaviour of Samoan girls.
[7] This is the first reference to the event by Padel: it is not yet his own interpretation but only what he hears from the Protestants on his arrival: Nous sommes partis de Taïti à la fin du mois d’août, et nous sommes arrivés aux premières îles du vicariat central d’Océanie le 7 du mois de septembre; la première terre que nous avons rencontrée, c’est l’île de Tutuila; nous y avons relâché, et y avons séjourné une huitaine de jours. Nous n’avons pas été trop bien reçus dans cet endroit; la croix qui flottait au haut de notre grand mât et la présence de huit prêtres catholiques étaient plus qu’il n’en fallait pour émouvoir les ministres protestants qui y dominent. De plus notre qualité de Français effrayait les naturels; dans cette île, mais dans une baie différente de celle où nous étions mouillés ont été massacrés le second et huit ou neuf matelots de Lapeyrouse, qui donna à ce lieu le nom de baie des Assassins. Depuis ce temps les naturels craignent toujours que les Français ne viennent venger la mort de leurs compatriotes. Ce ne sont cependant pas les habitants de cette île qui ont commis cet assassinat, mais des jeunes gens d’Upolu qui étaient allés là faire la guerre et qui dans l’ivresse de la joie que donne la victoire massacrèrent ces hommes qu’ils trouvèrent sans défense.
[8] Once again we see the Samoans coming forward with ritual decorum, as in 1722 (the girl with the necklace of blue beads), and as in 1791 (headdresses and necklaces made from flowers, see next chapter).