aux Samoas, comme partout, il est des hommes que tourmente un instinct
voyageur
(Gabriel Lafond de Lurcy, 1831)
Table of Contents
- Chapter 1. June 1722, the Dutch ‘discovery’ by Jacob Roggeveen
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- 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
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- 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
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- 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
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- 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
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- 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’
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- 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
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- ‘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…
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- ‘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)
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- 1. June 1791: Edward Edwards searching for the mutineers
- 2. Contacts at sea
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- ‘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
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- ‘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
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- 1. Whalers and merchants of the 1820s-1830s
- 2. 1827: Vanderford
- 3. 1827: Plasket
- 4. April 1831: Gabriel Lafond de Lurcy
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- 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
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- 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
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- 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
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- 1. Early Western misconceptions about Samoan adolescence
- 2. The Western myth of sexual hospitality