‘First Contacts’ in Polynesia

Table of Contents

In memory of the Samoans who discovered the Papālagi

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1. First contacts in Polynesia

Methodology and the Samoan case

Polynesian methodological comparisons

2. The origin of Western misconceptions about Samoan adolescent sexuality

Part One. The Samoan discovery of Europeans (1722-1848)

Chapter 1. June 1722, the Dutch ‘discovery’ by Jacob Roggeveen

1. Introduction

2. The narrative

3. Interpretations

4. Blue beads, ‘life-giving’ gifts and the mythology of the Papālagi

Chapter 2. May 1768, the French ‘discovery’ by Louis-Antoine de Bougainville

1. The narrative

2. Three hundred years of a tradition: the design of Samoan tattooing

3. An ‘ugly woman’

4. First exchanges: iron and cloth

5. The Tahitian reference

6. Departure

Chapter 3. December 1787, Lapérouse: first incursion on land

1. Lapérouse’s conclusion about Samoan ‘customs’: the women’s behaviour

2. Interpretation (i)—Samoa and Tahiti: ‘dialect of the same tongue’

3. Interpretation (ii)—they ‘offered their favours’: extension of the myth from Bougainville to Lapérouse

Lapérouse in Mauritius

First contacts in Tahiti: the Western myth and the ethnography

4. Interpretation (iii)—women as ‘worthy of the ferocious beings…’

5. Events—the real scene observed by Lapérouse: the sacred marriage of virgins

Internal analysis

The ‘women’: comparison with Tahiti

The ‘girls’ and the ‘sacrifice’: comparison with Samoan ceremonies of 1830-1850

‘The blinds lowered’: comparison with ethnography of the 1930s-1980s

December 1787: the first marriages with Papālagi

6. Daily events: the presence of women and ‘very young girls’

7. A comparative hypothesis for Polynesia concerning the ‘young girls’ and the sexual presentations in first contacts

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

1. Contacts at sea in the Manu’a group: ‘barter’ with men or ‘offerings’ to awesome creatures?

Barter and ‘theft’

Iron and beads

2. First landings (Tutuila, 9 December and 10 December) and first incidence of violence

‘They bartered for beads… priceless diamonds’

A ‘real act of hostility’?

A ‘chief’ on board

3. Second landing: the fateful day of 11 December 1787

‘The happiness in such an enchanting site’

‘Massacre Bay’: twelve Europeans and thirty Samoans

4. The precious beads, again

Lapérouse’s and Vaujuas’s interpretations

A Samoan view? The recipient of the gift

5. A Samoan view? ‘Killing’ a Papālagi and a raid on the life-giving goods

6. The missionaries’ interpretations: thieves from elsewhere

7. A Samoan view? The Papālagi as ‘spirits’ and the virgins in the first line of battle

8. Other interpretations

The story of a beachcomber

Augustin Krämer’s interpretation: ‘Où est la femme?’

9. Noble and Ignoble Savage…

‘I am angry with the philosophers…’

The London Missionary Society and the Marists

The Noble and the Ignoble… gender: ‘Diana’ and ‘Hercules’

Chapter 5. The turn of the century: from Edward Edwards (1791) to Otto von Kotzebue (1824)

1. June 1791: Edward Edwards searching for the mutineers

2. Contacts at sea

‘Had never seen a ship before’

A woman on board

‘The savages attacked them’

Tutuila: ‘they have murdered them’

The beads

3. 1791-1824: the avoidance of Samoan shores

4. April 1824: Otto von Kotzebue. First exchanges

5. The presence of ‘women’: young virgins

6. More exchanges and moral judgements

‘Animal-people’

Other exchanges and the beginning of the barter

7. ‘Very good waraki’ (women)

8. Last exchanges

Chapter 6. Commercial vessels. Another French visit: Lafond de Lurcy

1. Whalers and merchants of the 1820s-1830s

2. 1827: Vanderford

3. 1827: Plasket

4. April 1831: Gabriel Lafond de Lurcy

An unexpected visit

Descriptions

5. Beads and girls. ‘Grandeur et décadence’ of the gift of beads

6. Last days of Lafond’s visit

7. Conclusion on Lafond’s visit

8. 1832: John Stevens

Chapter 7. The late 1830s: Dumont d’Urville and Wilkes; Jackson and Erskine

1. August 1838: J.-S.-C. Dumont d’Urville, an overview

2. Arrival in Samoa: meeting with a ‘Mr Frazior’

3. Observations on the trees, the birds… and the women: internal analysis of the text

4. The first perspective of colonisation

5. 1839: the Wilkes Expedition in Tutuila

6. 1840: John Jackson in Ta’ū

The kidnapping of a Papālagi

Fifteen or twenty virgins

An intercultural dialogue

On women as ‘wife’ (ava)

7. 1848: John Elphinstone Erskine

Chapter 8. Conclusion

1. Early Western misconceptions about Samoan adolescence

2. The Western myth of sexual hospitality

Part Two. Methodological comparisons

Chapter 9. ‘On the boat of Tangaroa’. Humanity and divinity in Polynesian-European first contacts

1. Who has the right to speak about what?

Anthropology: a study of the Others’ Other

Valid ethnohistorical questions versus spurious academic debates

2. The hierarchy of ‘light’

‘Luminous’ appearance

The Polynesian hierarchy

3. Weapons, tools, glass jewellery and fabrics

4. The ‘gods of here below’ and the notion of atua

5. The boat-islands and images

6. The sun as the point of reference, the canopy of heaven and Polynesian space-time

Sun, clouds and sky

The world ‘under the sky’

7. First conclusion: men/chiefs/gods

8. The questions on the lips of the islanders at the time of the first contacts: ‘perhaps not like our goblins’, ‘perhaps on a boat sent by Tangaroa’

Aotearoa-New Zealand: beings who are ‘spirits but perhaps not our spirits’

In the Cook Islands and in Tonga: envoys from the gods ‘on the boat of Tangaroa’

‘Are you a spirit?’ (Fiji)

9. Super-human and yet human: the ‘sexual contacts’

10. Polynesia-America: the same ‘question’

11. Exchanges of images: image of Lono, image of Cook (Tahiti)

12. Political appropriation: Europeans as adopted cousins (Napoleon, the ‘Kamehameha’ of Europe)

13. Epilogue: what is the situation today? Exchanges of names and gazes that meet

Chapter 10. Sacred cloth and sacred women.

1. European misconceptions

2. Cloth

3. Ceremonial gifts of cloth

4. Ritual efficiency and rites of wrapping

Life-giving gift

Wrapping the Other

Obscurity and light, concealing and revealing

5. Some misunderstandings concerning nudity and Polynesian women’s sexual appetites

6. On ‘shaking the hips in a rotary motion’: the dualism of the body

‘Shaking the hips’

The dual body

7. Concerning the undressing of the upper part of the body in indigenous contexts

8. Concerning the exposure of the lower body in indigenous contexts

9. Concerning the undressing of the upper part of the body in early encounters and its subsequent adaptations

10. The whole body in early encounters: male gifts of cloth

11. Female gifts of cloth in early encounters

12. Conclusion

Chapter 11. The Papālagi (‘Europeans’) and the Sky. Etymology and divinity, linguistic and anthropological dialogue

1. The antiquity of the expression ‘Papalagi’

2. The invention of the notion of ‘bursting through’

3. The Samoan contemporary interpretation

4. The cosmological contradiction

5. No ‘bursting’ at all: linguistic arguments

6. Another hypothesis

7. European gifts and the unwarranted encounter between the etymology of papālagi and the apotheosis of Captain Cook

More on the etymology of ‘papāla(n)gi’

The importance of the gifts in first contacts

On Europeans as ‘gods’: the unwarranted link

Conclusion: Ethnohistory-in-the-field

Illustrations

SAMOA Early European views…

… and colonial times

Then photographs replaced engravings, while Samoan houses remained the same

Early Europeans misinterpreted…

‘Taupou’ and Manaia or Chiefs, all wrapped in siapo and fine mats, represented the dignity mamalu of the Samoan way aganuu FaaSamoa

TAHITI: the view from the literary salons in London and Paris

TAHITI: a more realistic view

Sources of Illustrations

SAMOA:

TAHITI:

Bibliography