The Polynesians’ attempts to integrate new arrivals through such presentations of cloth gave rise to various misunderstandings. The Europeans saw these rites as an act of exposure, as a display of nudity and as an open invitation for sex. But, in Polynesian custom, the most respectful way to present cloth was to wind it around the body of a young girl/woman who had yet to bear a child. She would have been initially presented wrapped in a great length of tapa and/or mats, and to present the offering she would have divested herself of these wrappings until she stood ‘naked’. Whether they responded with disapproval or delight, the European visitors were astounded.
In nearly all the accounts of first contact the use of this term ‘naked’ is highly ambiguous. Was the girl really stark naked? Would she not have kept on the waistband of tapa, her maro? Maximo Rodriguez, a Spanish voyager, visited Tahiti in 1774, soon after Cook’s second visit. He provides an eyewitness account of the festival staged before the chiefs prior to a battle against another district:
Some women decked in quantities of native cloth presented themselves before the Chiefs in order to strip themselves and make an offering of the cloth to the said Chiefs, being left with only a maro on to cover their nakedness. They call this festival a taurua, and after it they prepare for a paraparau, which is like a tertulia or well ordered conversazione of which the main topic is the wars these natives engage in against those of Morea (cited in Oliver 1974, III: 1237).
Here the ‘naked’ girl retained her maro. Certain passages from Bougainville also indicate that, in the European accounts, the expression ‘quite naked’ can in fact refer to a girl dressed in a ‘waistband, maro’:
The inhabitants of Tahiti are often seen quite naked, having no other clothes than a sash, which covers their natural parts. However, the chief people among them generally wrap themselves in a great piece of cloth, which hangs down to their knees. This is likewise the only dress of the women; and they know how to place it so artfully, as to make this simple dress susceptible of coquetry. (Bougainville 1772b: 250)
So we can see how a Polynesian dressed normally (i.e. wearing a maro) can turn into someone whose alleged complete nakedness indicates the first stirrings of sexual desire. In several other eyewitness accounts the observers do not even bother to specify whether the private parts are exposed or not. Descriptions of ‘nakedness’ therefore have to be treated with some caution. Europeans saw the maro as a form of underwear, and so in their view the person lacked clothing, was already undressed. Moreover, we know that European men regarded bare-chested women as being in effect naked, and sexually provocative.
Travellers who passed by Tahiti after 1767 (the date of initial contact) reinforced this view when they misunderstood the handling of the upper garment worn by the Tahitians. In that part of Polynesia the inhabitants frequently wore a kind of poncho or tiputa. It was made from a rectangular piece of tapa, with a hole made for the head, and it hung down to the hips. This piece of clothing did not have any ritual significance but simply provided protection from the cold, as many of the inhabitants were living in the mountainous interior at the time. But at ceremonies of welcome both men and women would remove the poncho as a gesture of respect. For the most part the European visitors had no understanding of the social meaning of this gesture, particularly when it came to the women. When they saw the women revealing their breasts in front of them they thought it was the prelude to a sexual encounter. Generally speaking, when Europeans saw dancers performing in a maro or a loincloth, they perceived them to be ‘naked’, and once they saw them as naked, they inevitably perceived them to be ‘lascivious’.
The European male-centred view of the time reinforced this chain of cumulative misinterpretations. Bougainville wrote several commentaries on the ‘nature of the fair sex’, which, he suggested, was such as to lead all women on earth to ‘desire mostly’ the pleasures of sex, even if their education induced European women constantly to deny it (les femmes paraissent ne pas vouloir ce qu'elles désirent le plus). Hence the French admired a people—the Tahitians—who had apparently kept intact the original concordance between natural desire and collective behaviour, since ‘they are not embarrassed to make love in public and frequently, while we hide ourselves to perform such natural actions’ (Nous nous cachons pour faire une oeuvre aussi naturelle: il la font en public et souvent).[10] Bougainville’s companion, the Prince of Nassau, noted in his journal that when the Tahitian girls undressed in front of the French, this was nothing to be suprised at. They were simply following a quite natural inclination to discard whatever was an obstacle to pleasure, namely clothes. Indeed, he called all female clothing ‘a refined obstacle to pleasure’ (une parure importune pour le plaisir).[11] These few examples show us that all the members of Bougainville’s expedition perceived explicitly sexual connotations in the attitude of Tahitian females who disrobed in their presence.
[10] Such was the French interpretation after they had seen that a ‘whole crowd’ assisted at the sexual presentation of young girls to the Frenchmen. They misconstrued the presence of this assembly—composed of people who were chanting prayers and held a green bough as an offering—as a ‘natural’ Tahitian taste for watching love-making.
[11] ‘Journal de Fesche’, in Taillemite ed. 1968: 15-16, note 2; ‘Journal de Nassau’, in ibid.: 51. See more extensive quotations in Taillemite (ed.) 1977, and further references in Tcherkézoff in press-1.