Haole Historians: How Their Objectives in the Pacific Impacted the Written History of
Polynesia
Nikita Ernst
Advised by: Professor John Sharpless
Senior Thesis
May 2010
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Introduction
“They brought their ordinary world in their heads, in their values and
perceptions, in their language and their judgments; but they lived
extraordinary lives on their ships, on their beaches, in their mission stations, in
their forts. The quality of this extraordinary life, its systems, its relationships,
its rituals, its boundaries, was what was transported to the Land, was seen by
the Men, determined their actions among the Men. The quality of the life they
held in their heads, its categories, its norms, its values, its perceptions of role
and environment, was the backdrop against which they lived their lives in the
Land. Their construction in new places was a remaking of this more natural,
more familiar world. They would make their islands in their own image.”1
Although speaking specifically about the impact of Western sailors in the
Marquesas, this passage embodies the phenomenal culture shock, which took place as
explorers, profiteers, missionaries, beachcombers, and historians arrived in Polynesia.
They brought the ordinary world in their heads, and it was by those standards that they
judged what they saw. Their missions in Polynesia made their lives extraordinary, and
their intentions affected what they experienced there. Slowly but surely, they remade
Polynesia into a place more familiar, a place more like the one from which they came. In
doing this, they created a history. A new era of Polynesian history was born, as a trickle of
outsiders turned into a flood, and Polynesian culture struggled to absorb the effects of such
an onslaught. The islands were never the same, as any Polynesian culture touched by the
West was thereafter influenced by the West.
The foreign visitors to Polynesia did more than just make history. In the eyes of the
West, the explorers, and those who followed, gave Polynesia a history. Many Europeans
Greg Dening, Islands and Beaches: Discourse on a Silent Land: Marquesas 1774-1880
(Chicago: Dorsey Press, 1980), 6.
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thought of Polynesia as a region without a history. From the outside, Polynesia seemed
peaceful, untouched by time, and completely isolated from all other parts of the world.
White visitors imagined that when they landed on the islands the people were living no
differently from when God first placed them on the Earth. Polynesians were a people
without a history because their history could not be understood in European terms. They
subsisted in a primitive state, without an advanced economy, and still worshipped pagan
gods. The arrival of Europeans meant starting the clock. With Western social, religious,
and economic influence, Europeans felt, Polynesian cultures could begin to evolve and
move forward.2
In reality, the inhabitants of Polynesia were not a people without a history.
Thousands of years of rich history passed between their initial migration and the first
contact with explorers. Unfortunately for historians, like most prehistoric societies, the
Polynesians had no written language with which to document their history and culture.
They relied solely on oral traditions, each generation passing down their history, and
customs through education, story, and song. Polynesian genealogies were the most
important aspect of their history and the natives were meticulous in memorizing them.
Their lineage and relation to legendary ancestors determined their social status and the
ability to trace themselves back to great men and women was vital to their system of belief.
The best could trace themselves back to their people’s origin story and that knowledge
helped them feel connected to their kin and maintain courage in battle.3 Because
Polynesian history was remembered, but not recorded, there are no true primary sources
Eric R. Wolf, Europe and the People Without History (Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of
California Press, 1982), 3-24, and Richard Lansdown, ed., Strangers in the South Seas: The
Idea of the Pacific in Western Thought (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2006), 18.
3 Peter H. Buck, Vikings of the Sunrise (New York: Frederick A. Stokes Co., 1938), 22-4.
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written about the people by the people. It was not until Europeans reached Polynesia that
first hand records of the region began to appear. Even the Polynesian oral histories, once
transcribed, failed to gain historical legitimacy. Today’s historians must rely on personal
accounts, rife with bias, written by outsiders for documentation of this vital period in
Polynesia’s history.
In one respect, the writings of explorers, traders, whalers, missionaries,
beachcombers, and historians were significant because they permanently documented the
history and culture of people never before recorded. They preserved the history of culture
contact as they experienced it, in their letters, journals, log books, and educational volumes.
While having written sources is ultimately better than having none, their writings set in
stone Western ethnocentric misconceptions of Polynesian culture and history that forever
altered the way Polynesian history is remembered. However, those misconceptions were
far more complicated than many historians realized. The writings of explorers, whalers,
traders, missionaries, beachcombers, and colonial historians were undoubtedly influenced
by the idea of European superiority, but more specifically by their purposes in the Pacific
and their motivations for writing about what they experienced.
The broad biases found in primary writings on Polynesia stemmed from education,
religion, and Western ideals about society and superiority. Level of education and piety
varied incredibly from writer to writer and was often difficult to determine with certainty.
Whether in the eighteenth century or today, simply attending school did not guarantee a
common level of education or worldliness. While missionaries as a group were the most
religious of the writers, religion was an inescapable factor in the mentality of all who grew
up in Europe or America in the eighteenth century. Both education and religion affected
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the written primary accounts to different degrees, and integrated into the common attitude
toward non-Western cultures.
The Western opinion of indigenous cultures included a curious dichotomy between
positive and negative. The Polynesian islanders brought to life the symbol of the Noble
Savage, a man of “uncorrupted natural society…perhaps the only one on earth inhabited by
men without vices, without prejudices, without wants, without dissensions.”4 Europeans
were almost jealous that people could live so simply, undisturbed by the burdens of
civilization, and governed only by the laws of nature.5 It did not take long for the fantasy of
the Noble Savage to give way to the “fallen nature of indigenous societies.”6 As whites
spent time on the islands, they witnessed terrible acts of cannibalism, sacrifice, and pagan
rituals which shocked their idyllic visions; the West began to view Polynesians in a more
savage light. The Polynesians’ immoral lifestyle, and apparent absence from the progress
of time emphasized their need for civilization.7 European thought shifted toward
humanitarianism, and it became their duty to bring civilization to “savage” Polynesia, and
protect its people from threats to progress.8
Regardless of good intentions, Europeans still considered themselves
unquestionably superior to the Polynesians, first because of their religion, and by the midnineteenth century because of race. While there was a great deal of scientific debate and
Anthony Pagden, ed., Facing Each Other: The World’s Perception of Europe and Europe’s
Perception of the World (Hampshire, Great Britain: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2000), 565.
5 Richard Lansdown, ed., 66 and Anthony Pagden, ed., 607.
6 Jane Samson, Imperial Benevolence: Making British Authority in the Pacific Islands
(Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1998), 8.
7 Samson 4, and Lansdown, 18.
8 Stuart B. Schwartz, ed., Implicit Understandings: Observing, Reporting, and Reflecting on
the Encounters Between Europeans and Other Peoples in the Early Modern Era (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1994) 452, and Samson 25.
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disagreement on the origin of man and how he had evolved, the concept of “survival of the
fittest” held strong in the minds of many. The Polynesian’s inability to progress, by
European standards, and their culture’s weakness in the face of intrusion solidified their
status as inferior.9 All along the way, “it was the savage’s business to understand and
conform to [Western] notions, and not [Westerner’s] business to regard the savage’s.”10
Though opinions changed over time, the whites always considered themselves superior to
the Polynesians. As such, historians tend to attribute Western prejudices to these
overarching ideas, and often overlook the important distinction between the different
kinds of people who wrote while in Polynesia.
While the preoccupation with Western superiority was certainly present in the
mind of all whites who visited Polynesia, the explorers, profiteers, missionaries,
beachcombers, and colonial historians, by virtue of their occupations, had significantly
different biases. Their reasons for being in Polynesia, whether it was to discover, turn a
profit, or evangelize, directly affected how they wrote about the people that they found
there. The differences in intention made each group unique, and added layers of
complexity beyond the popular attitude about Polynesia. Understanding the different
biases, and the reasons for them, is essential for historians trying to piece together
indigenous history out of non-indigenous sources. Analyzing prejudices more precisely
allows scholars to gather the most accurate information from these sources, enabling the
writing of more veracious history.
The extensive array of subject matter covered by the writings of explorers, whalers,
traders, missionaries, beachcombers, and historians forces the analyst to narrow the focus
9
Lansdown, 192.
Samson, 2.
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of an investigation to one aspect of culture. Violence was particularly relevant to
Polynesian cultures, and also stood out as an excellent example of biases in the primary
writings. Polynesian wars and incidents of violence were more likely to surprise or offend
the whites who witnessed them, which meant that the occurrences were often included in
their writings. They were less likely to hold back their opinions on such horrible subjects,
allowing the reader to understand how the author felt, as opposed to simply what he saw.
The distinction was important, because feelings rarely equate to accurate history.
The portrayals of Polynesian violence clearly revealed both the internal prejudices
and scarcity of cultural knowledge of the white writers. These problems were
understandable, because of the short amount of exposure to the cultures and the great
differences in mentality between the whites and the natives. While Polynesians upheld the
belief that violence was best avoided they resorted to it in many situations when foreigners
felt it was excessive. In Polynesia, people went to war quite often and over misdeeds as
seemingly trivial as theft, insults to honor, or breaking of the taboo. Polynesian cultures
also accepted, and sometimes encouraged, practices such as infanticide, human sacrifice,
and cannibalism, which reasonably horrified the Europeans who witnessed them.
However, these practices followed strict religious customs that helped keep the gods happy
and kept the population on a small island in check.
Each writer’s ability to comprehend the violence was related to his reason for being
in the Pacific. His occupation determined whether he landed on an island, how long he
stayed, and what he did while he was there. All of these things shaped visitors’
perspectives, which defined what they wrote. Because explorers, profiteers, missionaries,
beachcombers, and historians did not enter the Pacific along an orderly timeline their
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purposes in Polynesia were much more indicative of their biases than when they were
there. Deciphering those biases is key to discovering the true history of Polynesia.
Section 1
Explorers
“The annals of the Pacific are filled with stories of murder and revenge.
They tell of outrages on the natives followed by fierce reprisals, mutinies
successful or unsuccessful alike ending in bloodshed, and scarcely credible
oppressions practiced by the captains and their crews.”11
Explorers were the first white men to enter the Pacific in force. The first primary
writings on Polynesia are those of explorers documenting their experiences and
interactions in their ships’ logs. They took note of what they saw and brought that
information back to Europe. They opened up whole new worlds of history, as their
writings were often the only documentation of cultures that had, up until that point, been
untouched by the Western world. The original writings on the area are numerous and
diverse in their subject matter, ranging from articles to journals to books, encompassing
ocean routes, weather patterns, and island interactions. These volumes documented the
people of Polynesia for the first time, thus beginning the timeline for their written history.
The significance of these writings is undeniable, simply because these explorers
gave future historians the first real look at Polynesian life and culture. However, these
writings were the first in a long line of publications that misrepresented Polynesian culture
K. L. P. Martin, Missionaries and Annexation in the Pacific (London: Oxford University
Press, 1924), 167.
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and history, forever limiting the level of accuracy that later historians could hope to
achieve in their writing. Without realizing it, explorers were examining the region and its
people through the lens of their own culture and their specific biases directly impacted
how the history is documented and remembered. Because the explorers were the first to
enter the region, they had no frame of reference, and were especially ingrained with the
philosophical idea of the Noble Savage and some of the other delusions about the Pacific
espoused by those who had never been there. The reasons that explorers traveled to the
Pacific were the most influential in terms of how they perceived the people that they found
there. Their reasons for writing about their experiences determined the emphasis of the
information that they recorded. Knowing why the explorers were in Polynesia, and why
they wrote about what they saw, helps historians extract useful information from biased
documents.
At the dawn of the sixteenth century, the map of the world was still largely
unfinished and the Pacific was almost completely unknown. By the 1520s, European
traders reached the eastern edge of the Pacific Ocean in their dealings with India, but
traveled no further. It was only a few years previous, in 1513, that Vasco Nuñez de Balboa
sighted the western shores of the Pacific from Central America. In 1519, Ferdinand
Magellan was the first European to cross the Pacific and did so by traveling through
Polynesia. It was not until almost eighty years later, when Alvaro de Mendaña discovered
the Marquesas that a ship crossing the Pacific actually landed on an inhabited Polynesian
island. The Dutch followed shortly after, using the Pacific as a route to new trading
opportunities in Asia. Dutch sailors were the first to land on the islands of Tonga, Tuamotu,
New Zealand and Easter Island. By the 1740’s, the British crossed the threshold of Cape
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Horn. Once they realized the potential for prestige to be gained by Pacific exploration they
became a permanent presence in the region.12
European governments endowed hundreds of ships’ journeys to Polynesia in the
hopes of gaining territory and prestige. Some sailors traveled by their own desire and on
their own dollar, into the unknown. Whether intended or not, these were voyages of
discovery. Early on, these sailors helped draw the map of the Pacific and, in doing so, they
discovered, and later claimed, territories for their kings and queens. Once the ocean
revealed the existence of inhabited islands, many men set out in search of untrodden areas
of trade that could provide new goods, willing markets, and that could be easily
monopolized. Still others were commissioned to search for a prophesied southern
continent.13 There were also innumerable and valuable scientific discoveries to be made in
the untouched region of Polynesia.
The first voyage of Captain James Cook fell under the purview of scientific discovery,
as well as British naval interests. His voyage was also a good example of how setting out
with innocent intentions of pure discovery could not prevent the problems that
accompanied intruding on a culture that was so unlike Cook’s own. On Cook’s first voyage
to the Pacific, his main objective was to observe and report on the movement of Venus as it
crossed the sun, but he was also encouraged to take observations of the soils, plants, people
and animals of any island he encountered. All the while, he was supposed to maintain
friendly, but careful, relations with the natives he met, with the knowledge that someday
Peter H. Buck, Explorers of the Pacific: European and American Discoveries in Polynesia
(Honolulu: Bernice P. Bishop Museum, 1953), 1-24.
13 James Cook, The Journals (New York: Penguin Books Ltd., 2003), 7.
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England might take control of the islands.14 However, a peaceful atmosphere was difficult
to maintain from the very beginning, regardless of his locale. Even when greeted
welcomingly, conflicts quickly arose between the natives and the whites over stolen items
or claimed property. The concept of private property was very different in the mind of an
islander, and Westerners could not comprehend the notion in a way so significantly
different from their own. Many of the cultural misunderstandings that resulted from the
inability to communicate led to violent encounters for many who traveled in Polynesia, and
ultimately culminated in the murder of Captain Cook in Hawaii.15
This unbridgeable cultural gap defined explorer-writers in Polynesia. Even the
occasional native translator16 could do little more than prevent some of the worst
misunderstandings and subsequent violence. First and foremost, taking note of the
Polynesian people was not a priority for the explorers. Most were interested in conquest,
profit, and prestige. Although specific purposes varied from captain to captain, and while
many could be described as knowledge seeking, few had much concern for the lives of the
people. They recorded their journeys and the information that was requested. Some, like
Cook, had scientific interests outside the realm of what his benefactors had asked for, but
short stays on the edge of island civilizations were not conducive to producing accurate,
The Voyage of the “Endeavor” 1768-1771. Edited by J. C. Beaglehole. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1968. instructions cclxxx-cclxxxiii, moorehead 4
15 Alan Moorehead, The Fatal Impact: an account of the invasion of the South Pacific, 17671840 (London: H. Hamilton, 1966), 21.
16 Native translators were sometimes voluntary additions to the crews of ships but often
they were young Polynesians who had a grasp of English taken aboard and forced to serve
as an intermediary between the whites and the natives. They almost always had an agenda
of their own, whether it was to gain material goods from the whites or simply escape their
captive state. These translators were far from fluent in English, so misunderstandings
were still common. In many instances translators would purposely lead the white crews
into danger, or provoke the Polynesians, to facilitate their own escape (Lockerby, 133-135).
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detailed accounts of the culture.17 For the most part, explorers’ narratives did not record
the traditions of the Polynesian people; they recorded their own achievements. Their work
was often published to give the public a taste of an exciting new area of discovery. If the
men were well known, like Cook, their accounts were likely to be published, especially once
interest in the region increased.
Regardless of the fact that these men were not in Polynesia to document the people,
the natives made their way into logs and journals. These first accounts of the indigenous
Polynesians were often lacking in detail and or consistency because of the attitude of the
writer or the amount of time spent observing them. The explorers usually observed the
physical appearance of the natives, their canoes, and the food that they ate. If they were
welcomed into a village, they may have taken note of the style of houses or their methods of
agriculture. They could usually identify an authority figure with whom they would attempt
to barter with, but the explorers understood little about the greater system of social
hierarchy. Because these men normally never stayed in one place more than a few weeks,
they rarely observed or wrote in detail about native warfare. Most writings dwelt upon the
curious nature of the natives and their propensity for thievery. These characteristics,
combined with a fear of the unknown, often exacerbated already tense situations, and led
to violence that the explorers did document.
George Vancouver, a protégé of Cook’s, documented an attack on his crew by
Chatham Island natives, which he felt was completely unprovoked. Vancouver and his
crew arrived, laid claim on the island, and hoped they would be supplied with food and
water in exchange for a few presents they had offered to the islanders. Upon their arrival
17
Moorehead, 10.
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the natives “by their threats and gestures plainly indicated their hostile intentions…
brandishing their spears and clubs with much vociferation.” After Vancouver
demonstrated the power of his firearm, the tension grew worse. A native approached him
in a challenging manner and Vancouver’s first response was to raise his weapon. A
skirmish inevitably ensued. Though the crews’ guns easily trumped the clubs of the
natives, the portrayal by Vancouver made the islanders seem unstable, unpredictable, and
hostile.18
Vancouver had not expected such a reaction from the Chatham islanders. He likely
envisioned them as simple Noble Savages that would welcome him and his men into their
paradisiacal home. His preconceived notions of Polynesians left his mind closed to the
possibility that they would be wary of his ship’s presence, and react badly to something as
simple as the firing of a gun. His writing revealed his astonishment and dissatisfaction with
the encounter, and because his mission only required that he claim the land, he had no
reason to stay and learn why the confrontation had turned violent. Since he was writing
simply to document his journey he had no reason to justify the natives’ actions, nor could
he without trying to understand their culture. Though it is safe to assume that most
explorers entered the Pacific curious about what they might find there, the majority of
them left without understanding Polynesian cultures well enough to record detailed and
accurate information.
Captain James Cook was an anomaly in his group of explorer-writers for his genuine
interest in Polynesia. Most explorers were ignorant of Polynesian culture and only
attempted to learn more if it benefited them in their pursuits. Literature on the Great
George Vancouver, A Voyage of Discovery to the North Pacific Ocean and Round the World
1791-1795, ed. W. Kaye Lamb (London: The Hakluyt Society, 1984), 382-87.
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Navigator revealed his sincere interest in gaining scientific knowledge, which extended
well beyond his given instructions, about the places he visited and people he found there.
He too, was ingrained with the visions of Rousseau’s Noble Savage, but unlike many other
explorers, Cook was concerned about how his presence might affect the Polynesians.19 He
was also considerate of how his writing would affect the perception of Polynesian culture.
Captain Cook often seemed to give the Polynesians the benefit of the doubt in his
writing. While in the Society Islands he observed, “a custom in preserving the skulls…of the
dead but whether of their friends or enemies I can not pretend to say…It’s very probable
that the owners of them had been killed in battle...” It was surprising that Cook was so
tactful in his description. He assumed that victors removed the trophy heads after battle, a
comparatively justifiable circumstance, as opposed to countless other gruesome
possibilities. Cook’s notes confirmed the Maori practice of cannibalism, but clarified that
some tribes abstained, and speculated that the practice likely evolved from the custom of
showing no mercy in battle.20 Once again, he linked the practice to something as relatable
as giving no quarter, even though the Maori consumed humans under a variety of
circumstances. His tone in describing his observations was quite scientific, lacked the
emotional bias found in many other accounts, and he frequently clarified violence practices
with an explanation that might have been acceptable to his European audience.
Unlike most Pacific explorers, Captain Cook was aware of the biases of his time.
Obviously, some prejudices are only visible in hindsight, but Cook tried hard to document
information as accurately as he could regardless of his biases. He wanted to prevent
Kerry Howe, “The Fate of the ‘Savage’ in Pacific Historiography.” The New Zealand
Journal of History. Vol. 11 No. 1 (April 1977): 138.
20 Beaglehole, 153, 282.
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further misconceptions about the Pacific, whether positive or negative, from spreading. 21
Historians are fortunate that Cook was so self aware in his writing, as his journals are
arguably some of the most significant to the discourse of Pacific history. However,
possessing a greater awareness of the cultural gap did not equate to recording accurate
history. He still had the European ethnocentricities instilled in him by his place of origin
and upbringing. He had the mentality of a protector, and while good intentioned, that
mentality exposed his feelings of intellectual and social superiority.
Each explorer entered Polynesia with little or no accurate knowledge of the people.
Discovery was their primary mission. Explorers hoped to claim land for their country and
open up future areas of trade. They were certainly not in Polynesia to document its people.
They documented their own achievements and observed the Polynesians in terms of their
interactions with them. Those interactions were limited to short stops to resupply ships or
slightly longer stays for scientific observation. Neither circumstance allowed crew
members to spend much time on land, or with the people. Knowing no better, the first
explorers often described the Polynesians as simpletons with child-like curiosity. The
natives seemed akin to the Noble Savage, living an uncomplicated, idyllic life in paradise.
As time passed, so did the European perception. Interactions with outsiders often led to
violence, and word of that violence quickly spread, by mouth and through print, to those
who continued to travel to the Pacific. In the minds of Europeans, Polynesians evolved into
unpredictable beings who were easily offended and resorted to violence, sometimes even
before the explorers did. Their writings showed this change. Understanding the reasons
for Pacific exploration and their motives for writing, as well as how the perception of the
21
Pagden, 569.
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Polynesian changed as the area was explored, helps historians separate the biases from the
undeniably significant beginning of Polynesian history and culture studies.
Section 2
Whalers & Traders
“Small merchantmen have no business to venture themselves there…I hold
them among the worst of savages for if they had that savage and ferocious
appearance… they would not be so likely to deceive Europeans who by trusting
too much to appearances have been artfully murdered.”22
After explorers mapped the Pacific Ocean, profiteers entered Polynesia in droves.
Driven by the desire for new areas of profit, traders and whalers began flocking to the
Pacific at the end of the eighteenth century in hopes of taking advantage of newly
discovered wealth. By the time profiteers entered the region, knowledge of Polynesia was
growing. Explorers’ journals were available and stories of sailors’ adventures spread
through word of mouth. Traders and whalers had access to far more information than the
explorers had when they first infiltrated the region, but the new information was far from
sufficient. Confrontations resulting from clashes of culture increased as more whites
poured in. The perception of the Polynesian morphed from the naïve view of the Noble
Savage to an apprehensively defensive approach to the island “savages.” Just as the
explorers documented their journeys, so did whalers and traders. Just as their purpose in
the Pacific impacted their writings, so did the objectives of profiteers affect what they
documented.
22
Strauss, 6.
16
After Cook’s death in Hawaii, his crew continued the journey and found that a great
deal of money could be made by selling the furs they acquired in the Pacific Northwest to
the Chinese, and thus a profitable trade route was carved through Polynesia. Around the
same time sandalwood, an important commodity in China, was discovered in Hawaii and
many other Polynesian islands. However, it was not viewed as a worthwhile trade item
until ten years later. The British, specifically, saw sandalwood as an item they could trade
for tea, a most important commodity at that time. Beyond that, sandalwood was relatively
cheap and easily attainable, especially once Polynesian chiefs realized its trade value.23
The Napoleonic Wars drove most trading ships back to their homeports but after its
conclusion the industry boomed. Major sandalwood ports sprung up in Hawaii, the
Marquesas, and Fiji, and other island groups became important rest stops for the ships.24
However, by 1830, most of Polynesia had been stripped of the resource and trade in
sandalwood ceased.25 Even after the rush of the sandalwood trade passed, traders still
frequented Polynesia to attain provisions and trade in other goods. Traders’ presence left a
mark on the people they encountered. Along with the change in the ecology of their
islands, continued trade brought firearms to the island groups in large numbers.26 This
change altered the nature of native life, and native warfare, irreversibly.
Whalers also arrived in the Pacific at the end of the eighteenth century. British
whalers slowly made their way into Pacific waters during the late 1780s and American
Strauss, 4, 6, 24, and Dorothy Shineberg They Came for Sandalwood: A Study of the
Sandalwood Trade in the South-West Pacific 1830-1865 (Melbourne: Melbourne University
Press, 1967), 2-3.
24 Strauss, 27-8.
25 Shineberg, 7-8.
26 Strauss, 24.
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whalers followed in the 1790s.27 They harvested whale oil and other parts, which were
burned for fuel or used in the manufacture of candles, cosmetics, and other products.28
Like traders, their numbers were small until after the Napoleonic Wars, which drove many
ships home for fear of capture.29 At the end of the war, the industry rebounded and grew
significantly by 1820, establishing major ports in Hawaii, New Zealand, and Tahiti.30 Pacific
whaling peaked from 1835 to 1855, chiefly on account of plentiful supply and the
development of new products that required whale components. However, a financial crisis
in 1857, and the outbreak of the American Civil War, dealt serious blows to the industry.
Although it rebounded afterward, Pacific whaling never returned to its former glory.31
Though whaling did not require the same amount of interaction with the Polynesian
islanders that trading did, whaling ships still often stopped to pick up supplies or simply
rest.
Like most of the explorers who came before, whalers and traders were not in
Polynesia to interact with, or learn about its people. Once again, interaction with the
islanders happened only out of the necessity to rest and resupply ships with food and
water. Whalers took advantage of island ports to stop and rest, or repair their ship, after a
grueling fight with a whale. Traders likely stayed longer, hoping to barter or make
permanent trade arrangements with the natives. Unlike explorers, these profiteers were
not knowledge seekers. The places where they landed had already been discovered, and
other than the possibility of a new trade good and food for the journey home, they had little
J. T. Jenkins, A History of the Whale Fisheries (NY & London: Kennikat Press, 1921), 232.
Granville Allen Mawer, Ahab’s Trade: The Saga of South Seas Whaling (New York: St.
Martin’s Press, 1999), 5.
29 Jenkins, 233,
30 Strauss, 28.
31 Jenkins, 234-237.
27
28
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interest in what the islands or the people had to offer. These men were in the Pacific for
profit. Profiteers had no instructions beyond bringing back money or other goods, and
were less compelled to tolerate Polynesian culture or document their experiences
dispassionately. However, their interactions led to some of the first documentation of
Polynesian customs, religion, and forms of government.
In the dealings whalers and traders had with the Polynesians, they witnessed, first
hand, a great deal more violence than those who had come before them. Extended stays on
shore led to increasingly frequent conflicts between natives and whites and allowed tribal
warfare to be observed to a greater extent. In 1790, a trading ship from Boston captained
by Simon Metcalfe retaliated against Hawaiian natives who had taken a small boat, by
luring them close and open firing upon them. The Hawaiians took revenge, as many
Polynesians did, against the next Western ship to arrive on their shores. That progression
of events took place over and over again, in many of the island groups of Polynesia. As the
Polynesians continued to attack ships whose predecessor had wronged them, they struck a
fear of the deceivingly treacherous savage into the minds of sailors.32 The circumstances of
the profiteers’ presence in Polynesia led to the violence that culminated in undeniably
justifiable fear. Their uneasiness defined the way they thought and wrote about the
Polynesians.
Captain Brown of the whaling ship Catharine shared his account of the “treacherous
character of the natives of many of the Polynesian islands” after a visit to the Marquesas.
He and his crew anchored near Nuku Hiva33 hoping to buy hogs from the natives, but
because of the ferociously cannibalistic reputation of the people, he refused to go ashore.
32
33
Strauss, 6.
One of the main islands of the Marquesas group now included in French Polynesia.
19
An agreement for the trade was eventually made, but when Brown left the ship he was
captured, held for an impossible ransom, and was imprisoned for, what he believed to be,
future consumption.34 John B. Knights, master of the trading brig Spy, reported the Fijians
as similarly savage. He felt that they were the “most uncivilized of any of the inhabitants of
the islands of the Pacific…complete cannibals and cruel in the last extreme to one another.
They even eat the bodies of their own tribe.”35 Their descriptions of cannibalism were
justifiably grisly and lacked any explanation of the custom. The occupations of whalers and
traders obliged them to stay on land just long enough to witness terrible episodes of
violence, but never long enough to internalize the cultural rationalization for the practices.
After reading Knight’s description cannibalism it was puzzling to see that he still
believed, “Many of their customs are…of too disgusting a nature to be mentioned.” His
statement that they were “treacherous as the Devil himself” embodied the general opinion
of Polynesian inhabitants shared by most whalers and traders. 36 The idea of the Noble
Savage had faded quickly, and was replaced by the perception of the Polynesian native as a
violent and capricious heathen, in need of Christianization. Whalers and traders, more so
than explorers, allowed their faith to play a noticeable role in their descriptions of the
Polynesian people. In one instance, a group of whalers observed a triumphant group of
Raiateans37 celebrating their victory over a neighboring tribe in such a way that “…had he
[their missionary] been present, it is probable that a mode of rejoicing so humiliating to the
Francis Allyn Olmsted, Incidents of a Whaling Voyage (Rutland, Vermont: Charles E.
Tuttle Co. Publishers, 1969), 198-9.
35 The Sea, The Ship, and The Sailor: Tales of Adventure from Log Books and Original
Narratives. Marine Research Society (Portland, ME: The Southworth Press, 1925), 188-190.
36 Ibid.
37 Inhabitants of the island of Raiatea, a part of the Society Island group, now included in
French Polynesia.
34
20
native character would not have been adopted.”38 The observers felt the celebration was
decidedly heathen and perhaps would have looked very differently if a missionary was
working with the natives.
Sometimes ships’ crews went so far as to intervene in intertribal disputes. A whaler
recorded an incident in Tahiti in which an English captain tried to convince the “heathen”
side of a conflict to surrender to the converted Christian natives. When the Tahitians
refused, he and his crew attacked, which resulted in many casualties on both sides. The
whaler admitted that the intervention was ill advised, “its disastrous result teaches the
necessity of extreme caution in all transactions with the rude natives of Polynesia.”39
Extreme caution was advisable when dealing with the Polynesians, but not for the reasons
that the profiteers presumed. Limited cultural exposure combined with the mentality of
European superiority, left whites unable to describe the natives as anything but wild,
restless, and warlike even when fighting over something as seemingly legitimate as
territory. Had they understood the cultural ramifications of their actions, or the Polynesian
customs of war the whalers and traders could have taken the correct precautions and
avoided putting themselves in harm’s way.
As a result of whalers’ and traders’ purposes in Polynesia, they were far less likely to
describe Polynesians as the innocent native they were often portrayed as in earlier
accounts. This was sensible though, because many of the experiences they had with the
natives were downright unpleasant. Though these men clearly realized that their actions
sometimes provoked native hostility, they did not always understand why. While whalers
Frederick D. Bennett, Narrative of a Whaling Voyage Round the Globe, from the year 18331836 Volume 1 (London: Richard Bentley, New Burlington Street, 1840), 138-9.
39 Olmsted, 279.
38
21
and traders were more aware of the danger of landing on the islands, the requirements of
their missions put them at greater risk for harassment. It is important to note that those
unpleasant experiences were documented more often, and in greater detail, than
experiences of little consequence.
The writings of whalers and traders were usually little more than chronicles of their
voyage, with no intention of propagating cultural information on Polynesia. The volumes
that were available in their time were often published to educate the public on the
occupation of whaling or trader, or to laud the adventurous nature of the Pacific profiteer.
Of the groups of Westerners that wrote about their time in Polynesia, the accounts of
whalers and traders were the least glamorous, and unsurprisingly the least popular.
However, their narratives did supply a comparative wealth of knowledge, on account of
their extended time spend in Polynesia; they usually delved deeper into island customs
than the work of the average explorer. The more detailed writings of whalers and traders
added significantly to the historical literature of Polynesia.
However, the works of whalers and traders were also incredibly biased. The reports
of their experiences caused a shift in perception, from the view of the Polynesian islander
as a simple, peaceful soul, to vicious savages hoping to feast upon visitors. Their
lengthened stays near Polynesian communities had allowed them to view horrors far
worse than anything the explorers could have warned them about. Others simply
recognized the Polynesians as semi-civilized people already losing parts of their culture,
though few profiteers were concerned about the part they played in the deterioration of
culture. The general lack of concern shared by Pacific profiteers was the defining factor in
their writing. Without a desire to observe or understand Polynesian culture beyond what
22
they needed to survive, and without realizing the significance of what they wrote, whalers
and traders documented only what affected the sanctity of their everyday lives.
Section 3
Missionaries
“O yes! This is a man without the Gospel, ‘A beast in body, A demon in mind,’
but there is still hope…My commission extends even to these, for they are still
out of Hell, although at its very jaws.”40
The arrival of missionaries marked a turning point in the history of Polynesia. They
were the first group to take up residence in the islands, and their presence gave rise to
intense cultural changes. Previously, whites had done little more than pass through the
region as explorers, whalers, and traders, but a missionary’s purpose in Polynesia was
distinctly different than those who had come before them. Christian missionaries flocked
to the Pacific to save the heathen Polynesians. Instead of remaining safely on their ships,
missionaries lived alongside the natives, and in many ways integrated into Polynesian
society. Amicable interactions with the islanders were essential to create the atmosphere
of trust that was necessary to convert them. Unlike the explorers and profiteers, the
motivations of missionaries specifically focused on the Polynesian native.
The drastic difference in missionaries’ objectives also substantially affected the
biases revealed in their writings. Predictably, their prejudices stemmed from their religion,
and the idea that Christians were superior to all others. More than any other group, the
missionaries had a civilizing mission and strong convictions about appropriate islander
Neil Gunson quoting * Moore in Messengers of Grace: Evangelical Missionaries in the South
Seas 1797-1860 (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1978), 199.
40
23
behavior. They had access to the writings of explorers and profiteers, which emphasized
both the idea of the Noble Savage and the Polynesian as a barbarian. However, their
experiences in Polynesian led missionaries to characterize the islander as the latter,
marking the final fade out of the idea of the Polynesian as a Noble Savage.
The mission of Christian evangelism is almost as old as Christianity itself. Since
Jesus relayed these words to Mark, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every
creature,” Christians have heeded his instructions. In the sixteenth century, when
Europeans began exploring the last corners of the globe, missionaries quickly followed
them. They hoped to “…bring the light of the true Gospel to hitherto unknown nations who
had lived in darkness.”41 A series of religious revivals in the last half of the eighteenth
century and first half of the nineteenth century led to an increase in missionary zeal and
the development of voluntary missionary societies. Voluntary societies relied on monetary
donations and the initiative of devoted individuals to spread Christianity to uninformed
peoples. One of the predominant missionary groups in the Pacific was the London
Missionary Society. Created in 1795, society members set out with the intent to preach the
Gospel in a non-denominational way that remained unconnected to any particular
government. By 1796, they sent the first group of LMS missionaries, on the ship Duff, to
Tahiti. While they were not the first missionaries in Polynesia, the voyage of the Duff was
just the start of a massive expansion in missionary work in the area.42
The first missionaries had naïve ideas about what they would find and the ease with
which they would succeed in Polynesia. They understood from the writings of previous
Stephen Neill, A History of Christian Missions (Great Britain: Cox & Wyman Ldt, Reading,
1964), 21, 120.
42 Ibid., 213-214, 251.
41
24
travelers that the Polynesians were people of nature, with gentle dispositions, easily
influenced, living in an earthly paradise. Missionaries felt that working in the South Seas
was advantageous because of the supposed mild nature of the island governments,
accepting quality of the native religion, and the ease at which they expected to be able to
learn the languages. In hindsight, the missionaries entered Polynesia with the bare
minimum of accurate and useful information and, though it was the best they could attain
at the time, they soon realized how ill equipped they were to carry out their missions. Once
they arrived, their religious zeal was replaced with a survival mentality, as they struggled
to learn the language and maintain their beliefs and composure in a place they felt was so
full of sin and depravity.43 For many, the hardships were insurmountable and by the end of
the eighteenth century there were only seven missionaries left in the whole South Pacific.
By 1810 they slowly began to return, and were eventually able to establish missionary
stations all over Polynesia.44 Slowly but surely they converted the islanders to Christianity
while also altering the fundamental nature of the native cultures to fit European social
standards.
Just as those who came before, the missionaries who lived and worked in the Pacific
wrote about their experiences on the islands. Though not required to document their time
spent in Polynesia, many kept careful records of their experiences. A great deal of the
missionaries’ writing was in the form of journals that detailed the everyday happenings as
well as the history of the mission in that area. Some authors tried to write formal histories
of their island, but they often focused on the mission as opposed to the history told by the
Richard Lovett, The History of the London Missionary Society 1795-1895 Volume 1
(Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1899), 117, 120-1, 147.
44 Neill, 252.
43
25
inhabitants. Many missionaries described the customs and habits of the natives, providing
some of the first detailed ethnographic information on the people of the islands of
Polynesia. Most volumes organized beyond the day-to-day structure of a journal contained
a chapter or two on native warfare and other reprehensible violent practices.
Missionary writing was the most visibly biased of any of the primary source
material on Polynesia. Because their prejudices were so pronounced it is sometimes easier
for historians to separate fact from opinion, but it is unfortunate that the most detailed
primary documents are also the most distorted. One of the key motives in missionary
writing was to show the public how dire the situation was in Polynesia. It was important
that they maintained support from Europe in order to continue their work in the Pacific.
John Williams, a prominent member of the LMS, clarified in his book that he, “allowed [the
natives] to speak for themselves” so that the reader would not be led to “form a higher
estimate of the state of society in the South Sea Islands than facts should warrant.”45
Missionaries needed to separate themselves from their converts in their writing so that
their readers would not confuse missionaries’ integration into society with losing sight of
their faith and slipping back into the immoral customs of island culture.
Compared to the accounts of explorers, whalers, and traders, missionary accounts
were abundant with ethnographic information. Many seemed to document every part of
their day and every interaction they had in it. In doing so, missionaries documented
aspects of Polynesian culture that explorers and profiteers never stayed long enough to see.
There is no denying that missionary writings supplied the world with a wealth of new
knowledge, which remains valuable to the discourse today. However, their religious
John Williams, A Narrative of Missionary Enterprises in the South Sea Islands (London:
John Snow, 1840), xiii.
45
26
mission marred the facts. On multiple occasions authors referred to the island on which
they landed as something akin to “the seat of Satan,” on account of the horrific conduct of
the inhabitants.46 In the eyes of the missionaries, Polynesians were completely lacking in
moral principles, engaging in sinful activities such as fornication, infanticide, human
sacrifice, and unjustified wars. The resulting emotional prejudices were evident in their
writing.
In the journal of C.S. Stewart, a missionary of three and a half years on Maui, he
remarked, “scarce a day passes on which we are not most painfully reminded, that we
dwell among the habitations of cruelty.” He said this after he witnessed young boys of a
chiefly class stoning a “lunatic.” He continued to write about how “the helpless and
dependent, whether from age or sickness, are often cast from the habitations of their
relatives and friends, to languish and to die, unpitied and unattended.” He witnessed
natives suffering in the elements, ignored by their families, and once dead their corpses
simply hidden so as not to attract wild animals. Due to the widespread practice of
infanticide, Stewart agreed with “the apostle’s description of the heathen that they were
‘without natural affection, implacable, and unmerciful.’” He predicted, and other accounts
tended to agree, that where missionaries had not intervened two thirds of children born
were killed shortly after birth. The discomfort in his tone was apparent when he described
how a mother “instead of searching into the causes of its [her baby’s] sorrow, or attempting
to alleviate its pains, she stifles its cries for a moment with her hand, hurries it into a grave
already prepared for it, and tramples to a level the earth under which the offspring of her
46
Lovett, 147, Bingham, 55.
27
own bosom is struggling in the agonies of death!” Steward ignorantly suggested that the
most likely cause for the practice was to avoid the labor that caring for a baby required.47
Missionaries did whatever they could to prevent these sinful practices, spreading
Western ideas of social acceptability throughout Polynesian cultures. The missionaries’
unwavering adherence to their mission and their faith left them unable to understand the
cultural justifications for these practices. Their inability to understand left them unable to
write without biases. For example, the old and infirm were not abandoned by their loved
ones, but a dying person was considered taboo and by religious law had to be removed
from the home and not attended to by any more healthy people than necessary. The
prevalence of infanticide likely had more to do with population control than the flawed
character of Polynesian women. Knowing how unfaltering they were in their own beliefs, it
is easy to see how the missionaries misinterpreted these admittedly reprehensible customs
without having an understanding of Polynesian culture.
Living in Polynesia for many years at a time meant that missionaries also
experienced, first hand, a great deal more warfare than any group that had come before.
They prevented it when they could and, as more Polynesians were converted to
Christianity the frequency of warfare decreased. However, there was no lack of violence
for missionaries to observe. While in Mangaia, John Williams observed that “although
Christianity is embraced, the savage disposition cannot…be entirely eradicated in a few
months.” The characteristic to which he referred was their practice of “systematic
revenge” demonstrated by Mangaians through “great cruelty towards their enemies, by
C. S. Stewart, A Residence in the Sandwich Islands (Boston: Weeks, Jordan & Company,
1839), 191-2.
47
28
hewing them in pieces while they were begging for mercy.”48 When William Pritchard, yet
another notable LMS member, arrived in Samoa one of the first things he saw was “a
warrior, whose blackened face and oiled body glistened in the morning sun, shouting
vociferously and whirling his club over his head, and dancing and jumping about with the
most extraordinary antics. At his feet lay the head of a man he had slain…”49 He was
describing a wild heathen celebrating the gruesome death of his enemy.
Almost every volume written by missionaries mentions the frequency and
sanguinary nature of war in Polynesia. In Samoa, victims were sometimes scalped and
their bodies burned on great fires.50 In Rarotonga,51 Williams reported that both women
and children were slaughtered unabashedly when their warriors were defeated.52 The
Maori of New Zealand “were a warlike people who enjoyed fighting” and “their passion for
blood was monstrous in its abnormality.” They drank the blood of their victims while they
were still alive and feasted on people in front of their victims’ families. Fijians supposedly
possessed a similar lust for blood and “held no life sacred, whether friend or foe.” Fiji was
probably the most notorious island, where warriors were considered treacherous and
dishonorable and “bloodshed for its own sake was counted a worthy thing.”53
Regardless of the emphasis missionary authors placed on violence, their accounts
still depicted the Polynesian as a savage, for their violent tendencies or simply by virtue of
being a pagan. William Ellis, in his Polynesian Researches, supplied copious amounts of
Williams, A Narrative of Missionary Enterprises… 64.
W. T. Pritchard, Polynesian Reminiscences; or, Life in the South Pacific Islands ed. Berthold
Seemann (London: Chapman and Hall, 1866), 51.
50 Williams, A Narrative of Missionary Enterprises… 138.
51 Both Rarotonga and Mangaia are a part of the Cook Island group.
52 Williams, A Narrative of Missionary Enterprises… 55.
53 A Century in the Pacific ed. James Colwell (Sydney: William H. Beale, 1914), 123, 444.
48
49
29
accurate ethnographic information about all parts of Polynesian culture, but the influence
of his religious mentality manifested in his sections on warfare.54 In one particularly
memorable passage he described warriors as desperate, not brave, “when the warriors
forsook land, house, wife, and children, and, determining to refuse no quarter, went forth to
conquer or die.”55 In reality, Polynesian cultures were far more advanced and complex
than the writings of even Ellis revealed. Even missionaries who tried to document the
cultures in an academic manner, could not their own motivation-driven biases.
It is not surprising that the Christian missionaries could not see past horrible
behaviors to understand the reasons for them. Not only were some of the Polynesian
practices truly deplorable, the missionaries’ views were confined to the teachings of their
own faith. They believed that all of God’s children should behave the way that God had
proclaimed, and were shocked by those who did not. That shock and horror was
transferred to their writing. Their accounts were clearly biased, as they described violent
actions while failing to explain the cultural justifications for them. While no account was
solely focused on warfare, violence, or any reprehensible characteristic of the Polynesian
people and all included everyday aspects of their culture, the picture that the missionaries’
stories painted was often a grisly one.
Though missionary accounts were by far some of the most informative works of
Polynesian ethnography at the time and remain significant contributions even today, they
were not written with the purpose of documenting history in mind. The concept of the
objective observer simply did not exist. Missionaries could not separate the integrity of the
William Ellis, Polynesian Researches (Rutland, Vermont & Tokoyo, Japan: Charles E. Tuttle
Co., 1969), vii-xii.
55 Ellis, Researches 284.
54
30
Polynesian cultures from the customs that were unchristian. Most missionaries would not
have considered themselves observers, and they certainly never confused the importance
of that incidental occupation with their mission to bring God to the Polynesians. Like most
other primary writers on Polynesia, missionaries were not thinking about how their
portrayals would affect the way that the history of the region would be remembered.
Section 4
Beachcombers
“It is the common sailors and the lowest order of them, the very vilest of the
whole, who will leave their ship and go to live amongst the savages and take
with them all their low habits and all their vices”56
Like the missionaries, beachcombers arrived in Polynesia with the intent to stay. A
beachcomber, first described in literature by Herman Melville, was simply a person who
had left their ship and settled on a Pacific island. They might have been marooned by their
captain, shipwrecked by storms, captured by islanders, or simply voluntarily stayed
behind.57 Life in Polynesia was certainly inviting, with its comparatively loose social
standards, no demanding occupation, beautiful climate, and surprisingly hospitable island
communities. Beachcombers embraced the island life anywhere from a few months to a
few years and many died in their Polynesian homes.
Unlike missionaries, beachcombers did not go to Polynesia for the sake of the
Polynesians. Their actions served only their own purposes. The intentions of
H.E. Maude, “Beachcombers and Castaways.” The Journal of the Polynesian Society Vol.
73, No. 3 (1964): 254-293.
57 Maude, “Beachcombers and Castaways” 255, 263.
56
31
beachcombers were straightforward, though they varied greatly from one man to the next.
Those who became beachcombers voluntarily abandoned the hardship of sea life to enjoy a
simpler existence. Those forced to become beachcombers hoped to survive and possibly
escape, though some eventually adopted the Polynesian lifestyle. Their original
occupations dictated the perception beachcombers had upon arriving on an island. Men
became beachcombers as early as the era of exploration, so ideas about the Polynesian
native varied considerably depending on when a man became a beachcomber. The majority
of beachcombers were British or American sailors, about a fifth were convicts, and the rest
were an unlikely assortment of Africans, Asians, Native Americans, and educated whites.
They came from different social classes and levels of education, all of which affected how
they viewed Polynesian culture.
After they entered a Polynesian community, beachcombers’ perceptions changed
based on the length of time spent in their island community and the place they held in that
community. Those biases were further complicated by their reasons for writing about
what they had experienced. Though some recorded their time spent in Polynesia in a
journal, as interest in the area exploded, beachcombers took advantage of a public hungry
for adventure stories. Their tales often strayed from the truth, creating a difficult task for a
historian analyzing their work. The variation in their purposes in Polynesia and
motivations for writing made the beachcomber narratives both the most perplexing and
interesting sources on Polynesia.58
I. C. Campbell, “Gone Native” in Polynesia: Captivity Narratives and Experiences from the
South Pacific (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1998), 27, 48, 85.
58
32
The practice of beachcombing is as old as Pacific exploration; the first beachcombers
deserted Magellan in the Marianas in the 1520’s.59 The era of beachcombing began in the
late 1780’s with the commencement of two events: the establishment of Port Jackson in the
colony of New South Wales,60 and the beginning of commercial shipping in the Pacific.
More than ever before, the rise in shipping gave sailors the opportunity to abandon ship.
The men who became beachcombers, convicts or otherwise, usually abandoned trading or
whaling ships because unlike journeys of exploration, these ships remained longer at their
island stops and the level of discipline was much lower. The establishment of Port Jackson
in what would eventually become Australia gave the convicts who lived there an easy
escape route. They joined ships’ crews, stole boats, or hid onboard ships until they were
far from the harbor.61 When the ship reached a promising landing point the men simply
jumped ship.
In 1787, the first beachcombers arrived in the Hawaiian Islands. Many of those men
attached themselves to King Kamehameha62 and, in doing so, acquired a significant amount
of political power on the islands. By 1814, there were two hundred whites living in the
island group. 1789 saw the first beachcombers arrive in Tahiti, including some of the first
convict beachcombers who escaped from Australia. Tahiti was a major partner in the pork
trade with Australia at the turn of the century, creating a great deal of beachcomber traffic.
Beachcombers arrived in the Tongan islands in 1796, but were driven out or killed off three
years later by a string of civil wars. Castaways and captives returned slowly, but left again
Ibid., 255-6.
New South Wales was the colony that predated the present state of the same name in
Australia and Port Jackson is the natural harbor of Sydney.
61 Ibid., 256-258, 265.
62 Kamehameha is probably Hawaii’s most well known chief, having conquered and united
all of the Hawaiian Islands during his reign.
59
60
33
by the time William Mariner and the other crewmembers of the Port-au-Prince were
captured in 1806.63 It was not until 1800 and 1802, respectively, that beachcombers were
discovered in Fiji and Samoa. At one time, there were upwards of two thousand
beachcombers roaming the South Pacific. By the 1820’s, having been forced out by stricter
governments and influential missionary groups, the beachcombers had largely lost their
foothold in the major island communities and moved on to more remote island groups.
Depending on the island group, the epoch of the beachcomber ended between 1820 and
1850. If they chose to leave, men usually left the islands of their own accord, but some
were killed off or returned to white ships by natives in return for a small reward. 64
Though the Polynesians were justifiably wary of beachcombers at first, mostly
because of the threat of new diseases, they often accepted these men into their
communities with open arms. Undoubtedly, many of the whites that landed on Polynesian
shores were killed shortly after their arrival, or mistreated throughout the time they spent
there. Still, many beachcombers were allowed to land and live in great numbers. When a
beachcomber arrived he was stripped of his possessions and clothing, which became the
property of the chief. Oftentimes, the beachcomber became ward of the village leader,
which gave that chief heightened status in the community. Beachcombers were sometimes
made into chiefs’ slaves, but many were eventually given land, a wife, and accepted into the
highest social classes.65
Of the thousands of beachcombers in Polynesia, relatively few documented their
experiences living there. Most evidence of their existence was revealed by short
William Mariner, An Account of the Natives of the Tonga Islands. Compiled by John Martin.
(London: John Murray, Albemarle-Street, 1817).
64 Maude, “Beachcombers and Castaways” 258-262, 275, 278.
65 Maude, “Beachcombers and Castaways” 265-6.
63
34
descriptions in missionary journals or in the writings of other sailors who came across
them. However, a few beachcombers documented their experiences, usually after they
returned from their island sojourns. Oftentimes, beachcombers lacked the education to
write and publish the stories themselves, so many of their narratives were penned by a
different author.66 While some accounts were published in their narrator’s lifetime, others
were not found or printed until many years later, when the scholarly value was realized.67
These accounts had less influence on the public perception of Polynesia at the time, but
those published shortly after the author’s return gave the public a whole new look at
Polynesian life, from the inside.
Those who wrote claimed to have written in order to inform the public of their
experiences, which were some of the first of their kind and undeniably extraordinary. The
public at the time was particularly interested in tales of the man who had “gone native,”
especially after European powers became interested in colonizing in the region.68
Beachcomber writers especially wanted to profit from their experiences. Many returned to
Europe or America terribly disabled or simply down on their luck. Peddling their story in a
pamphlet was often the only way they could make a living.69 This motive made the
beachcomber narratives most worthy of skepticism. Knowing what the European public
wanted read, many of their stories romanticized the island life, depicting adventure
without cultural depth, and relying upon and reinforcing the preexisting prejudices of the
Samuel Patterson, Narrative of the Adventures and Sufferings of Samuel Patterson
(Fairfield, WA: Ye Galleon Press, 1967) ii.
67 Campbell, 27.
68 Ibid.
69 Patterson, ii.
66
35
reader.70 The beachcomber motives for writing and publishing were so far from the
simple desire to inform that, unlike most other European or American writings on
Polynesia, some of their accounts are purposefully lacking in truth, or even completely
fabricated.71
Beachcombers wrote about Polynesian life as they experienced it, or as they could
make the public believe they experienced it. They told of being trade intermediaries and
translators. They related farming techniques and prepared and ate Polynesian food. They
became and owned Polynesian slaves. They watched or took part in Polynesian marriage
ceremonies, religious rituals, and burials of great chiefs. They fought as great warriors and
became chiefs. Their experiences with war and violence were unique because, many times,
they were personally involved. Even when they were not fighting, beachcombers viewed
native warfare at a much closer range than any other whites.
A beachcomber living in a Polynesian community was expected to participate in
war, just as every other able bodied Polynesian man. The white man’s knowledge of and
talent with a musket, or other European weaponry, made him an indispensable part of a
chief’s fighting force.72 William Torrey, while in the Marquesas, was forced “to fight, to be
tattooed, and to engage…in cannibalism on the corpses of the victims.”73 George Vason, a
beachcomber in Tonga, related his dismay “at the lack of discipline and resolution in
Tongan fighting…” and “found their wars were too terrible for the mere gratification of
curiosity.”74 Each beachcomber held different attitudes about being forced to fight or to
Dening, Islands and Beaches, 132, 147, Campbell, 39.
Dening, Islands and Beaches 146-7.
72 John Coulter, Adventures in the Pacific (Dublin: William Curry, Jun. and Co., 1845), 177.
73 Campbell, 41.
74 Ibid., 51.
70
71
36
take part in the rituals that preceded and followed the fighting. As such, the tone of their
writing varies tremendously.
John Coulter was forced into the fray by his Polynesian, in his case Marquesan,
superiors. According to his account, if a white man refused to fight he would no longer be
safe in his community. However, if he fought on the side of his chief he would be graciously
rewarded. Coulter fought and was made a chief and was allowed to participate in decisionmaking war councils. Chiefly status required him to be tattooed extensively and wear the
clothing of a Marquesan chief. Throughout the narrative, Coulter expressed loyalty and
was, at times, almost complimentary to his Marquesan comrades, but even he could not
stop himself from commenting on the “downright picture of hell” that was their victory
celebration, or the undeniable existence of cannibalism.75 The dichotomy of these aspects
of his writing showed how beachcombers struggled to accept the entirety of their new
cultures. It is difficult to tell whether Coulter felt genuinely disturbed by Polynesian
behavior, or if he was writing what his readers wanted to read. His negative comments
reinforced the existing prejudices, but he may have tried to avoid appearing to sympathize
with people considered savages. Coulter’s tale focused a great deal more on the adventure
than the ethnographic details. His story was meant to please, not inform, its audiences.
Whereas Coulter’s account portrays him as a reluctant warrior, Edward Robarts,
also a beachcomber of the Marquesas, gladly embraced that role in Polynesian society.76
His account revealed the Marquesan proclivity for war and explained that, “They have two
kinds of wars. The one is with their avowed enemy, that when he is taken he is hung on a
tree on the grand moria. The other war is through some quarrel with their allies speaking
75
76
Coulter, 175-6, 187, 197, 227.
Campbell, 37.
37
disrespectfully…” Having taken part in many battles, his descriptions of the military
procedures were specific and his portrayals of the preparation and aftermath of war,
equally detailed. What his account lacked, in comparison to many others, was the
gruesome details of violence, written in such a way as to shock the reader. With this in
mind, and the fact that Robarts’ account was not written to be sold, it is easier to trust the
information that it offers. While it is still a “slight and superficial” account of Marquesan
culture it is one of the most accurate beachcomber narratives available.77
It is clear that it was not within the capacity of beachcombers, who were far more
familiar with Polynesian society than any other type of writer, to accept and understand all
of the Polynesian customs. In Samuel Patterson’s narrative of his stay in the Fijian islands,
he abruptly shifted from a benign description of Fijian agricultural practices to a section
stating, “These savages are cannibals, and eat the bodies of their own malefactors, and all
those of their prisoners: and as they were continually at war with some of the tribes
around them, and the breach of their own laws, in nearly every case was punishable by
death, they generally had a supply of human flesh.”78 William Lockerby, another
beachcomber in Fiji, was similarly lacking in perspective. Though he was well treated by
his chief, and served as an important trade intermediary for the Fijians, he still described
the merciless massacres, “savage looks” and “hellish yells,” admitting that “it is impossible
for me to convey to the mind of the reader an adequate idea of this terrible scenery of
human misery.”79 Excepting the especially horrible practice of cannibalism, it is surprising
The Marquesan Journal of Edward Robarts 1797-1824 ed. Greg Dening (Honolulu:
University of Hawaii Press, 1974), 19, 56, 61, 78-9.
78 Patterson, 88.
79 Lockerby, 44-45.
77
38
to read of beachcombers’ intolerance to Polynesian behaviors simply because of how
embedded they were in Polynesian culture.
The beachcombers in Polynesia were a far more complicated group than any of the
other primary writers. They were similar only in that they lived the same unique lifestyle.
Their objectives varied from man to man, from day to day, on and off their island. Though
beachcombers documented their time in Polynesia none, not even Herman Melville, had
traveled there to write. Many beachcomber accounts served only to impress a publisher or
sell a book, but they still brought valuable information to the discourse. Regardless of
motive, they all witnessed Polynesian culture in a way that no one else had.
While today’s scholars have an indication of which beachcomber accounts are most
accurate, it is important to examine the motives of each writer to understand why he was
in Polynesia and why he wrote about his experiences. Knowing a beachcomber’s previous
occupation allows historians to gauge his biases about the Pacific before he even landed
there. A beachcomber’s reason for staying on a Polynesian island affected his attitude
about being there, which dictated the place he held in society. His status in the Polynesian
community greatly influenced the way he perceived the natives after he arrived. The
beachcombers’ comparative purposeless upon arrival combined with the length of time
they stayed, and their integration into the community made their accounts rich in
information and the most difficult to analyze.
39
Section 5
Historians
“Happy is the nation that has no history.”80
In reality, Polynesia had both a vast history predating the arrival of Europeans and
an eventful history of Western contact. When Europeans settled in the islands, they began
to recognize that their new homes had a history. As colonies formed, men became
historians and started writing histories of their islands. For the first time, Westerners were
attempting to write comprehensive, chronological histories. Though few men originally
ventured to the Pacific to document its history, once they arrived, recording Polynesian
history became their purpose. However, writing with the specific purpose to inform
complicated, instead of alleviated, their biases.
Colonial historians often shared many of the prejudices of their predecessors,
especially the ideas about Western religious and social superiority. The conflicting ideas of
the noble savage and the native as an uncivilized barbarian sprung from Enlightenment
ideals and the writings of previous travelers, which were some of their only resources.
Polynesians were still considered heathens in need of saving, morally inferior to the men
who had come to civilize them. Being forced to use the writings of explorers, profiteers,
missionaries, and beachcombers to write about Polynesian history, colonial historians
further ingrained those biases into the historical discourse. Just like the previous writers,
colonial historians wrote about Polynesian history through their own eyes. The purpose of
Abraham Fornander, An Account of the Polynesian Race, Its Origin and Migrations, and
the Ancient History of the Hawaiian People to the times of Kamehameha I (Rutland, Vermont:
Charles E. Tuttle Company, Inc., 1969), Vol 2, 5.
80
40
their volumes was to focus on the history of the island during and after the arrival of the
Europeans, as opposed to a record reaching back beyond the scope of Western influence.
That purpose, and their motivations for writing, determined their biases and shaped their
perception of the Polynesian people.
After colonization efforts intensified across Polynesia, colonists began writing
histories of the islands upon which they resided in order to educate future European or
American inhabitants. This was especially common in New Zealand, where the British took
particularly proactive steps to efficiently colonize the largest island chain in Polynesia.
These histories were often limited to the study of one community or ethnic group, and most
studies focused on interactions with white colonists. An example of this can be found in the
work of Richard Sherrin and J.H. Wallace, in Early History of New Zealand, which
endeavored to fill the void which existed in written New Zealand history prior to the
colony’s official settlement in 1840. The volume intended to be a history of “European
enterprise and adventure” denoting the purposeful exclusion of any pre-contact, native
history. As such, the sources used were confined to official documents and first hand
accounts of white travelers. Such accounts imparted statements such as, “The
countenances of all the natives seemed to partake of the image of their father the devil.”
The authors wrote of wars of revenge and how eating an enemy was the ultimate form of
humiliation for the Maori. They did not hesitate to “kill and devour one of their own race,”
and had a “sensual love of human flesh.”81 Like the writings that came before, any
explanation for cannibalism remained ethnocentric, and failed to explain the social and
religious complexities of the practice.
Richard A. Sherrin and J. H. Wallace, Early History of New Zealand ed. Thomson W. Leys
(Auckland, New Zealand: H. Brett, Printer and Publisher, 1890), preface, 178-9, 183, 352.
81
41
These limited histories often espoused a political, religious, or mercantile agenda,
with the purpose of bringing people to the colony, affirming the white Christian as
superior, or simply turning a profit. Arthur S. Thomson, a surgeon stationed with a British
army regiment in New Zealand for eleven years, hoped to provide a more comprehensive,
less incentivizing, general history of the colony which had theretofore not existed. During
his decade of residence, he had access to unpublished colonial documents as well as the
ability to speak with Maori tribesmen about their history.82 Despite his attempt at a more
all-encompassing history, his station in life and education, or lack thereof, showed through
in his writing.
In the tradition of the mid seventeenth century, with the introduction of Darwin’s
theories suggesting the notion of the biological inferiority of non-white peoples, Thomson
commented on the “comparative smallness of the brain…produced by neglecting to
exercise the higher faculties of the mind.” The cerebral insufficiency, left the Maori unable
to remember important events in their own history, such as “the art of steering canoes by
the stars.” According to Thomson, the New Zealand natives also lacked the intellectual
faculties of reason and judgment, which led to a predilection for war, cannibalism,
infanticide, and paganism. He wrote, “Revenge is their strongest passion…they derive
pleasure from cruelty and bloodshed,” and “are deficient in…courage.” Like the majority of
white writers of his time, he considered the New Zealand natives uncivilized and inferior.
He spent an entire chapter detailing their ignominious character, essentially arguing that
they had “receded rather than advanced in civilization.”83 While later in the book he
Arthur S. Thomson, The Story of New Zealand: Past and Present – Savage and Civilized
(London: John Murray, Albemarle Street, 1859), iii-iv.
83 Ibid., 81, 83, 85-7.
82
42
mentions instances of honor and civility, the chapter on the natives’ failings is placed
fourth, only after chapters on the natural history of the island and the speculative
migration of the people. A one-sided description of the Maori character was the first
information provided about the native people of New Zealand, which instilled a negative
image of the Maori in the mind of the reader from the beginning. Regardless of his use of
native testimonies, and friendship with a Maori chief, Thomson’s narrative was embedded
with his views on the inferiority of the natives and the superiority of Western behavior and
customs.84
Colonial historians that relied on the documents and testimonies of Westerners as
their sources all encountered the same problems in their writings. The testimonies utilized
were those of explorers, profiteers, missionaries, and beachcombers, all of whom wrote
with biases connected to their occupations, education, and religion. The motives of the
historians were equally troublesome. While they did intend to educate the public, colonial
historians hoped to sell their books or encourage settlers, more than they wanted to
document the truest possible history. The Polynesians and their islands remained
unimportant in the minds of Europeans in comparison to their own progress there. This
fact left colonial histories wanting in comprehensive historical information.
Contemporaneously, other colonists who fancied themselves historians began
writing histories that utilized native sources. These men often recognized that history
written from a primarily white perspective was not only lacking the Polynesian side of the
story, but was sometimes written to “conceal their own [European] misdoings.”85
However, the awareness of such problems did not always equate to an unbiased history.
84
85
Thomson, iv.
George William Rusden, History of New Zealand (London: Chapman and Hall, 1883), v.
43
Judge John Alexander Wilson, in his Story of Te Waharoa and Sketches of Ancient Maori Life
and History, recounted the history of the reign of the Maori chief Te Waharoa from a
distinctly Maori point of view. He relied on only the testimonies of Maoris, Pakeha Maoris86
and missionaries who personally knew Te Waharoa. The story began in the early 1800s,
and continued beyond the arrival of British colonists and missionaries. While it certainly
did not neglect the importance of Europeans to New Zealand history, their influence took
on a supporting role.
Even a writer so focused on the Maori and using seemingly legitimate sources could
not help but taint the history with his predispositions. Wilson’s conception of the Maori as
savage, and sometimes bloodthirsty, was apparent. In preparation for war, the natives
would “leave their homes as naked men…lashing themselves into a frenzy, with the excited
action, hideous gestures, and horrid yells of the war dance, they would rush upon their
enemy…if fortune favoured, they would indulge in a repast on the bodies slain.” At battle’s
end, “stark naked savages, flushed with success, drunk with blood, and wrought to a pitch
of fiendish excitement, ran wildly through the scene.”87 Though the scenes of war were
satisfyingly detailed, even this distinctly native history was marred by the prejudices of an
outsider. Wilson’s purpose was not to repair the reputation of the Maori. He simply
utilized new sources in order to add new information to the same biased history.
The continued belief in the European as superior, as well as Wilson’s heightened
social position as a judge in the New Zealand land courts, undoubtedly affected his writing
A Pakeha Maori was a white person who had willingly integrated into a Maori
community to the point of adopting some local customs and rejecting certain aspects of the
Western mentality of society.
87 John Alexander Wilson, The Story of Te Waharoa…Together with Sketches of Ancient
Maori Life and History (Christchurch, Wellington and Dunedin, N.Z. Melbourne and London:
Whitcombe and Tombs Limited, 1866), 48, 90.
86
44
style. The strange combination of source material is also a most probable culprit. The
Maori sources likely provided the detailed tribal information, but the biased accounts of
their behavior could have come from the missionaries or even the Pakehas. Missionary
bias was comparatively obvious, but the Pakehas’ prejudices were more difficult to
determine. Pakehas, while accepting of the Maori way of life, did not adopt the entire New
Zealand culture and their status in the community was contingent upon many
indeterminable factors that varied by person and community. As such, their input could be
influenced in any number of ways and likely came down to the attitudes and experiences of
each individual.
The issues of individual, and tribal, perspectives factored into any Polynesian
history based on purely Polynesian sources, most of which appeared in the form of
compiled oral histories and genealogies. During the colonial period, a few writers chose to
draw upon traditional Polynesian sources for the bulk of their historical information.
Possibly the most well known, and one of the most valued historians of this persuasion was
Abraham Fornander. Born and classically educated in Sweden, he moved to the Hawaiian
Islands in 1842, and lived there for thirty-four years until his death. He married a Hawaiian
and maintained strong familial and communal ties to his new Polynesian home. Fornander
arrived in the islands shortly after the missionaries and recognized that Hawaiian culture
was swiftly disappearing. He sought to preserve as much of traditional Hawaiian lore as he
could, and did so quite extensively with the help of his wife and her connection to the
native Hawaiian community.88
88
Fornander, Introduction to the new edition ix-xi.
45
In Fornander’s three volumes, now compiled into one tome entitled An Account of
the Polynesian Race, he hoped to preserve indigenous history as well as collect sufficient
information in order to compare Polynesian cultures with other cultures of the world. Not
a drop of ink or sheet of paper was spared in his attempt to immortalize every Polynesian
legend he could find. He used those accounts to speculate on Polynesian origin and
migration, describe customs, and attempt to build a timeline of their history using
Polynesian genealogy. He utilized some of the more well known writings of explorers,
missionaries, and beachcombers in order to expand upon the cultures of archipelagos other
than Hawaii. Those accounts infused their prejudices into some of his conclusions, but the
unaltered myths and legends spoke for themselves. He strived for objectivity, and in large
part succeeded. Not only was he an interested researcher, but the majority of his native
sources were predictably favorable to their Polynesian subjects.
As shown in Fornander’s treatise, warfare and violence played a significantly
different role in the Polynesian version of history, as opposed to the way whites recorded
it. Tribes often memorialized a glorious victory or triumphant chief in song or poem, while
ordinary defeats where allowed to fade from memory. If many years passed without a
disturbance, a gap often formed in their history. With nothing to commemorate years of
ordinary occurrences, those years passed by unnoticed. On the other hand, frequent war
and recurrent struggles for succession left the traditions blurry and inconsistently
remembered. Obviously, Polynesians would not have considered themselves savage and
barbaric, and therefore did not describe their practices in the same way as Westerners.
The Polynesians recognized war as a violent occurrence, but they spoke of it as a necessary
46
evil and were unfazed by their own methods of violence.89 Polynesian legends failed to
include a great deal of specific details about the battles they described, presumably because
it was assumed that the people hearing the stories already understood how war was
carried out. Polynesian folklore was not created for outsiders to study, its purpose was to
preserve the history of the Polynesian people for the Polynesian people.
Indigenous histories were plagued with as many biases as colonial sources, though
those biases were very different. Historians who wrote by using indigenous sources relied
heavily upon the testimonies of natives. The Polynesians remembered their own history
through oral genealogies, prayers, poems, and songs, which had been passed down through
hundreds of generations. While the Polynesians prided themselves on their impeccable
memory, it is entirely probable that these narratives were altered over time. These stories
were also highly subjective because the native relating the story to the historian could not
always be counted upon to do so without allowing personal feelings about their own
history to factor into their narrative. Polynesian legends were meant to preserve history
while glorifying a chief or tribe, which meant that the stories were already skewed in one
direction when they were created. Even Fornander recognized the issues of writing history
through myth. In legends referring to the death of the Hawaiian king Liloa, and the
ascension of Hamkau, he noted that Hamkau was always described as a “wicked, cruel, and
capricious,” ruler, but also that all of those stories had been perpetuated by Hamkau’s
rivals.90 The goal of historians utilizing native sources was to preserve the Polynesian
traditions, and as such they could not, in good conscience, attempt to remove the bias from
the stories without compromising the integrity of the tale.
89
90
Fornander, vol. 2, 5, 111, 123.
Fornander, vol. 2, 76.
47
The method of historical preservation became the most significant obstacle in the
larger picture of indigenous history. For the Polynesians, history was passed on through
oral traditions, myths, and genealogy, none of which are considered an appropriate method
for documenting history by the West. Western scholars are still apt to view myths as
sensational occurrences in ancient times, whereas history is regarded as factual and
verifiable. Polynesians could not, and did not, see the need to, separate the two. Their
legends told of real people and places, and helped maintain the cultural traditions that
remain today. Western scholarship, however, simply does not accept Polynesian oral
traditions as adequately neutral, comprehensive, or chronological. These concerns are
reasonable; oral traditions often meandered in terms of chronology, were not meant to be
exhaustive, and by definition were biased. Nevertheless, oral traditions offered a view into
Polynesia’s past which no method of Western history was able to offer.91
The colonial historian’s purpose was to write history, but even seemingly honest
intentions could not perfect the documentation of Polynesian history. These historians had
motives beyond writing history. Their histories had objectives, to bring people into the
colony, to educate them on settler life there, and to reaffirm the native as a heathen in need
of civilizing. Colonial historians were also motivated by the possibility for profit. They
used sources riddled with biases, and had no concept of how to eliminate them because
they held those same biases. Colonial historians took the first steps toward recording
accurate, purposeful, Polynesian history, but their efforts were largely in vain. The first
secondary source materials were as biased as the primary sources they cited. These
histories served as a kind of in between phase of Pacific history. One where ethnocentric
91
Howells, 14, 16.
48
prejudices dominated the European perception, and the idea of cultural relativism was
more than a century away. It took many years before historians took a true interest in the
Polynesian side of their colonies’ histories, and by then the original cultures were all but
gone. Little of the primary source material that these, and later historians, had to work
with was unbiased enough to paint a true picture of Polynesian culture or history. This
problem plagues Pacific history today, as scholars continue to sift through the writings of
explorers, whalers, traders, missionaries, beachcombers, and the first historians trying to
uncover the missing pieces of Polynesian history.
Conclusion
The explorers, traders, whalers, missionaries, and beachcombers who came to
Polynesia are now simply the players of Pacific history. They came and went with different
intentions and wrote with different motives. Their purposes in Polynesian shaped their
perceptions about the people, and how they wrote about their experiences. The first
contact narratives were read and absorbed by the authors’ contemporaries, influencing the
accounts written afterward, and continue to be used today in secondary source material.
By looking critically at these sources and the motivations of their authors, it is possible to
understand the vision of the Pacific as it progressed through Western history.
Comprehending that vision and how it has changed is vital to understanding how and why
these people wrote what they did. This understanding helps current historians sift through
the propaganda and prejudice in order to understand, as accurately as possible, the
Polynesian side of the historical story.
49
A true history of Polynesia is impossible to obtain. Even the most talented
historians, analyzing the primary sources as best they are able, cannot change the
inescapable reality of Western intrusion in Polynesia. The explorers, whalers, traders,
missionaries, and beachcombers shaped the history of the region, became a part of it, and
irreversibly changed the cultures they encountered. Not only did they document Polynesia
through the lens of their own culture, but their very existence altered the islands and their
people. The arrival of outsiders so different from themselves led to a serious questioning of
their beliefs about their world. They were not completely isolated, the Polynesians knew
that they were not the only people on Earth, but they could not have fathomed the reality
that the white man brought. They mistook the white men for gods, their machines for
magic, and Christianity made them question everything they had ever believed. The
moment whites set foot in Polynesia, that world began to change. Their documents only
reflect that change.
Is any of the information from primary documents completely correct? Probably
not. There are too many variables to know for sure. That uncertainty challenges every
Pacific historian to try to look past the prejudices of their sources and avoid prejudices of
their own. Written histories of Polynesia are little more than representations, and far from
the status of undisputable fact that so much Western history holds.92 Understanding the
problems of indigenous history compels historians to question other history previously
assumed unequivocal.
It is essential to realize that, though Polynesia serves as an excellent example of the
problems of observing and documenting indigenous non-Western cultures, no two
92
Howells, 13.
50
societies should be analyzed the same way. It is far too easy to categorize indigenous
groups into one large category of history or culture and view everything in that category
the same way. Indigenous is not a category. Marginalized is not a category. Non-western is
not a category. No culture is just like another. No culture should be solely defined by its
isolation. Each indigenous culture must be examined with fresh eyes and a new mindset.
Each indigenous culture is infinitely unique and should not be compared to other
indigenous cultures. The many island groups in Polynesia are also a great example of the
fact that one culture is not homogenous, isolation and outside influence can shape culture
from valley to valley or island to island.
Pacific history has experienced a sea change since the first explorers set foot on the
islands and began to write about what they saw. Unfortunately, most of the problems of
writing Pacific history still remain today. There simply seems no perfect way to think
about, or do, Pacific history. Most historians simply lack what is considered the
appropriate mentality, whether because of their own heritage or their training, they think
of history in a Western way, and island histories just do not correspond to that framework.
Regardless of mentality, sources will always be an issue with the history of the Pacific.
There is no escaping the fact that the earliest primary sources were written by people who
had no concept of the importance of their documents. Nevertheless, the accounts of
explorers, profiteers, missionaries and beachcombers provide some of the only primary
sources accepted by the Western method of history. For all their faults, these chronicles
are irreplaceable additions to Polynesian history. The accounts paint a striking picture of
Western-indigenous interaction, which is a vital part to understanding what was arguably
the most jarring sequence of events in the history of Polynesia. Though none are perfectly
51
correct accounts of Polynesian history, they all bring something important to the discourse.
Each bit of writing on Polynesia reveals something about its history, the history of contact
and reactions to that contact. Historians must continue to sift through the primary
documents, influenced by the purposes and prejudices of their writers, in order to uncover
a more accurate history of the Pacific.
52
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