Fesche, the only observer to give us specific details about the first sexual presentation of a young girl, also provides us with a summary that either takes this scene up again, adding a number of points, or combines it with other similar scenes at which he had been present or that other men had described to him.
Indeed, Fesche prides himself on describing “their marriages” for us. Like the rest of the French visitors, he of course knows nothing about how Tahitians might have conceived such marriages, the French only having stayed for ten days. At least, he admits straight away that he is only hypothesising. What is interesting for us is that he admits that he is relying only on the sexual offerings made to the French (see his text below). For that reason, we need to pay his account some attention. It is not an imaginary tale about Tahitian marriages, but the presentation of points in common between the several scenes of sexual presentation that were enacted for the benefit of the French.
The description provides an important piece of information that I shall comment upon in a later section, namely the performance of an “operation” that made the young girl “cry.” But first of all let us note two aspects, namely that the Tahitians tried to force the French to take action, and that the girl was still young and was “brought forward” by the adults. The Tahitian adults were surely following a definite strategy:
Fesche’s text
Their marriages are, I believe, made in public. I make this supposition on the basis of what happened to possibly two-thirds of the Frenchmen: the fathers and mothers who brought their girls [amenaient leurs filles], presented them to the one who pleased them, and urged them to consummate the task of marriage with them [consommer l’oeuvre de mariage avec elle]. The girl [la fille] struck the chest of the one to whom she was being offered, uttered a few words that expressed, from the meaning we have attributed to them,[19] the surrender she was making of herself, lay down on the ground and removed her clothing. Several made a fuss when it came to the point [Plusieurs faisaient des façons quand il s’agissait d’en venir au fait], however they allowed themselves to be persuaded. During the operation [Durant l’opération], the islanders assisting[20] [with the operation], always present in large numbers, made a circle around them, holding a green branch, sometimes they threw one of their cloths over the actor,[21] as in Cythera they covered the happy lovers with greenery. If one of them happened to have a flute, he would play it, others accompanied him singing couplets dedicated to pleasure.[22] Once the operation was over, the girl would cry [L’opération finie, la fille pleurait], but would easily recover her composure and make a thousand caresses to her new spouse as well as to all those who had been witnesses.
There is some evidence that these are the same ceremonies as are used in their weddings; there may be some other formalities required, I believe this all the more readily because an officer from the Etoile to whom a young Indian girl had offered herself, but who was not favourably disposed, a Cytheran [Ahutoru], the same one who joined us on board to follow us in our travels, took the girl and showed him how he should act. If there were no other formalities than those for a marriage, he would not have acted in this way. Moreover, all they did for us can only be viewed as honours they wished to pay to strangers.
Married women are a model of faithfulness … but those who are unmarried are free and prostitute themselves with whomever takes their fancy (Fesche 2002, 259–60).
Fesche begins his passage by saying, “Their marriages are, I believe, made in public.” But let us go straight to the conclusion: seeing the officer’s difficulty, Ahutoru gave a demonstration of what had to be done. Fesche saw in this further confirmation that “marriage” (what he was really interested in was the act of intercourse) was performed in front of everyone.
But his remark about what Ahutoru did on this occasion is very useful. It confirms something that comes up on at least five occasions in the French accounts, namely that the Tahitians did everything they could to force the French to engage in sexual intercourse. These were the episodes (Tcherkézoff 2004b: ch. 5–6):
(1) the first contact at sea (April 5) involving two young girls “from thirteen to fourteen years old” who were presented in a canoe while the adults made gestures that clearly mimicked the act of intercourse (2) and (3) the presentation of “Venus” (the first Tahitian woman who went on board, an adolescent who was accompanying Ahutoru: April 6) and of “Helen” (the scene of April 7: Nassau caressed her breasts but found himself unable to go any further), where these two girls were brought forward by the adults or even the “elderly men.” Onlookers made explicit gestures, with one of them even using “very singular means” to attempt to arouse Nassau’s sexual interest (4) Nassau’s walk around the village, when on going into one of the houses he was surrounded, undressed and examined and touched intimately (see section above “In the following days: Bougainville and Nassau”) (5) the escapade of Bougainville’s cook (April 5 or 6), who experienced the same fate, but with less solicitude apparently (he swam to shore before the official landing was felt over, and once the examination had been made, he was pressed up against a girl, gestures being made to show what was expected of him – absolutely terrified, of course, he could do nothing at all).
On each of those occasions, the Tahitians wanted the French to perform the sexual act that they expected of them. This time, as Fesche describes it, Ahutoru also gave a practical demonstration. But Fesche only draws from the attitude taken by Ahutoru toward the officer an additional argument in support of the idea that Tahitian “marriages” always take place in this fashion, that is, “publicly.” And he sees the Tahitians’ attempt to extend this offer of “marriage” to the French merely as “honours they wished to pay to strangers” (or new “allies and friends,” as Nassau put it; see above).
The generalisation made by Fesche suggests important elements in the forced presentations of young girls. The Frenchman speaks of “girls” and generalises by referring to “the fathers and mothers who brought their girls,” meaning, therefore, that in every case the victim was young. It will be recalled that apart from the generalising expressions about “women” which merely express the fantasies of the Frenchmen, both of our French reporters (Nassau and Fesche), when they describe the exact situation of the first presentations, use only the words “girl” and “young girl.”
In every case the girl was brought forward by others. The Western image of young women adorned with flowers, living only for love and throwing themselves at unexpected voyagers, and only too delighted to have yet more opportunities for making love, is shattered by this account where Fesche generalises from what happened on April 7 and a number of other scenes that must have happened in the same way.
Moreover, we have seen that during these presentations of young girls to the French, the onlookers always formed a circle and held a “green branch” in their hand. From many concurring sources we know of the ritual role of these branches in Tahiti: they allowed a taboo to be set aside so that one could enter into contact with a superior (Tcherkézoff 2004b, 424–6). The formal, ceremonial aspect is quite clear.
And there is another element: a piece of tapa cloth might be thrown over the girl at the crucial moment. Therefore, it was not a question of voyeurism on the part of the audience with the aim of arousing collective sexual excitement. This further discredits the notion of the Tahitian taste for lovemaking performed “publicly.” It similarly calls into question the theory prevailing in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries which held that Tahitians made offerings to please the gods in the form of acts of human copulation performed in the open, so that they would be visible from the heavens (Moerenhout 1837; Handy 1927; see Tcherkézoff 2004b, 463–6, 474–7). But this gesture also points to something tangible. If we move forward in time and take into account more detailed Polynesian ethnography of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, we invariably see that the fact of wrapping a person in tapa cloth is always a ritual gesture, whose aim it is to call down the presence of the sacred forces from the world of the gods onto the earthly stage and to give efficacy to their actions (Valeri 1985; Babadzan 1993, 2003; Tcherkézoff 2002, 2003c, 2004a: ch. 10).
Finally, a spectre haunts these texts: that of deflowering. The words for which I have added the original French version in Fesche’s description of “marriages” strongly imply something never explicitly stated, either in Bougainville’s official account or in any of the journals. Let us reiterate these elements: the likely age of the girls presented; phrases indicating that they “made a fuss” before proceeding to the awaited act; the fact that the girl “was crying,” and especially the word “operation,” which in French as in English, when used in reference to the human body, implies some kind of serious surgical procedure. All of these things, when considered together, lead us to conclude that the sexual act offered to the visitor implied defloration.
We can see that Bougainville’s readers, who were presented with nothing but delightful and beguiling scenes and visions, had no conception that the young women of “New Cythera,” whose “only passion is love,” as Bougainville told them, were in fact – in the arms of these Frenchmen – not women gaily displaying their flower necklaces and their desires, but girls weeping: girls who were undergoing their first act of sexual intercourse. Only Fesche speaks of this directly. In the other accounts of the French stay in Tahiti, there is nothing to be found on the subject of defloration. However, one of Bougainville’s sentences, brief as it is, suddenly reveals that the officers and sailors had not hidden the truth from their captain. It was always, if we take Fesche’s generalisation as a guide or at least sometimes, the case that the girl brought forward and presented to the French was a virgin. If at least some members of the expedition had not so remarked to Bougainville, it would be difficult to see why, at the moment of his departure, he wrote, in reference to the peaceable character that seemed to him to typify Tahitian society,
… love, the only God to which I believe these people offer any sacrifices. Here blood does not run on the altars [presumably a reference to human sacrifices] or if sometimes it reddens the altar the young victim is the first to rejoice at having spilt it (2002, 72–3).
[19] We should remember that the French only communicated by signs, as we know from the descriptions of other scenes, as in the negotiation between Bougainville and the chief Eriti about the question of knowing whether the French could set themselves up on the shore. They could not understand and, as Fesche tells us, they just tried to guess the meaning from the context. In fact, the words uttered at this moment were certainly not meant to inform the French about “the surrender she was making of herself,” which was already obvious and did not need any further explanation, but were probably ritual words linked to the act of striking the chest, a gesture that appears in the rites of the Arioi cult (see this chapter, Conclusion (II)).
[20] Les assistants insulaires; Dunmore translates this as “the islanders themselves” rather than as “island assistants/participants.” It is not clear whether Fesche means “assisting” (helping with the procedure) or just “attending” (merely present at the scene). Still, the ritual gestures of these people (i.e. holding the branch, singing) suggest that their presence was a meaningful component of the whole ceremony.
[21] Sur l’acteur, thus singular. Fesche probably means that the girl was partly dressed, or temporarily covered, with a ceremonial barkcloth.
[22] See previous notes. As the French were unable to understand what was being sung, this is only Fesche’s interpretation.