The Endeavour Journal of Joseph Banks 1768–1771 [Volume One]
Manners & customs of S. Sea Islands
Manners & customs of S. Sea Islands
We have now seen 17 Islands in these Seas and been ashore upon 5 of the most principal ones. Of these the Language manners and customs have agreed almost exactly, I should therefore be tempted to conclude that those of the Islands we have not seen differ not materialy at least from them. The account I shall give of them is taken cheifly from Otahite where I was well acquainted with their most interior policy, as I found them to be a people so free from page 334 deceit that I trusted myself among them almost as freely as I could do in my own countrey, sleeping continualy in their houses in the woods with not so much as a single companion. Whither or not I am right in judging their manners and customs to be general throughout these seas any one who gives himself the trouble of reading this Journal through will be as good a Judge as myself.
All the Islands I have seen are very populous all along the sea coast, where are generaly large flats coverd with a vast many breadfruit and Cocoa nut trees. Here are houses almost every 50 yards with their little plantations of Plantains, the tree that makes their cloth1 &c. but the inland parts are totaly uninhabited except in the vallies where are rivers and even there are but a small propo[r]tion of people to what live upon the flats.2 They are of the larger size of Europæans, all excellently made, and some handsome both men and women, the only bad feature they have is their noses which are in general flat, but to balance this their teeth are almost without exception even and white to perfection, and the eyes of the women especialy are full of expression and fire. In Colour they differ very much: those of inferior rank who are obligd in the excersise of their professions, fishing especialy, to be much exposd to the sun and air are of a dark brown; the superiors again who spend most of their time in their houses under shelter are seldom browner (the women especialy) than that kind of Brunette which many in Europe preferr to the finest red and white. Complexion3 indeed they seldom have tho some I have seen shew a Blush very manifestly; this is perhaps owing to the thickness of their skins, but that fault is in my opinion well compensated by their infinite smoothness much superior to any thing I have met with in Europe.
1 He does not mean that cloth was made from the plantain; he is mentioning separate trees.
2 The population question, which Banks disposes of so briefly, is difficult. He may have had reliable information, but he saw very little of the interior even of Tahiti, and nothing of it at all on the other islands. Archaeological remains suggest more population inland than he thought, but its extent is extraordinarily difficult to estimate. It was certainly a manahune, lower class, and not an arii or chiefly, population. See Cook I, pp. clxxiv–clxxvii.
3 In the sense of colour. He is thinking of the complexion of the English lady.
During our stay in these Islands I saw some not more than 5 or 6 who were a total exception to all I have said before. They were whiter even than us but of a dead Colour like that of the nose of a white horse; their eyes hair eyebrows and beards were also white; they were universaly short sighted and lookd always unwholesome, their skins scurfy and scaly and eyes often full of Rheum. As they had no two of them any connextions with one another I conclude that the difference of colour &c. was totaly accidental and did not at all run in families.1
So much for their persons. I shall now mention their method of Painting their bodies or Tattow as it is calld in their language. This they do by inlaying the colour of Black under their skins in such a manner as to be indelible; every one is markd thus in different parts of his body according may be to his humour or different circumstances of his life. Some have ill designd figures of men, birds or dogs, but they more generaly have this figure Z eitheir simply, as the women are generaly markd with it, on every Joint of their fingers and toes and often round the outside of their feet, or in different figures of it as square, circles, crescents &c. which both sexes have on their arms and leggs; in short they have an infinite diversity of figures in which they place this mark and some of them we were told had significations but this we never learnt to our satisfaction. Their faces are in general left without any marks, I did not see more than one instance to the contrary. Some few old men had the greatest part of their bodies coverd with large patches of black which ended in deep indentations like coarse imitations of flame, these we were told were not natives of Otahite but came there from a low Island called Noouoora.2
1 Cf. p. 263, n. 2 above. Morrison in his Journal (p. 230) describes something of the same sort, which may be o'ovi arii or ‘chief's leprosy’: ‘They Have also a kind of leprosy which changes the Body to a Dead Wite in some parts while the natural Collour is heightened to Black; this Change of Collour extends to the Hair on the head & body some of which is white as snow, while the rest is Jet Black, which gives them a very odd appearance. Some are Changed all over but this does not effect their Health or Strength’. Davies, in his dictionary (1851), defines o'ovi as ‘a certain scrophulous disorder’; Andrews (1944) as ‘a disease like leprosy indigenous to the islands’.
2 Probably Au-ura, one of the Tuamotus; I suspect Banks was given some such information as that they were taata no Au-ura, people of or from that island.
Tho they are so various in the application of the figures I have mentiond that both the quantity and situation of them seems to depend intirely upon the humour of each individual, yet all the Islanders I have seen (except those of Ohiteroa) agree in having all their buttocks coverd with a deep black; over this most have arches drawn one over another as high as their short ribbs, which are often £¼ of an inch broad and neatly workd on their edges with indentations &c. These arches are their great pride: both men and women shew them with great pleasure whether as a beauty or a proof of their perseverance and resolution in bearing pain I can not tell, as the pain of doing this is almost intolerable especialy the arches upon the loins which are so much more susceptible of pain than the fleshy buttocks.
Their method of doing it I will now describe. The colour they use is lamp black wich they prepare from the smoak of a kind of oily nutts usd by them instead of candles;1 this is kept in cocoa nut shells and mixt with water occasionaly for use. Their instruments for pricking this under the skin are made of Bone or shell, flat, the lower part of this is cut into sharp teeth from 3 to 20 according to the purposes it is to be usd for and the upper fastned to a handle.2 These teeth are dippd into the black liquor and then drove by quick sharp blows struck upon the handle with a stick for that purpose into the skin so deep that every stroke is followd by a small quantity of Blood, or serum at least, and the part so markd remains sore for many days before it heals.
I saw this operation performd on the 5th of July on the buttocks of a girl about 14 years of age; for some time she bore it with great resolution but afterwards began to complain and in a little time grew so outrageous that all the threats and force her freinds could use could hardly oblige her [to] indure it. I had occasion to remain in an adjoining house an hour at least after this operation began and yet went away before it was finished, tho this was the blacking of only one side of her buttocks the other having been done some weeks before.
1 The Tiari, Tutui or Candlenut, Aleurites moluccana.
2 This instrument was called the ta; ta is also to strike.
They are certainly as cleanly a people as any under the sun except in their lousyness, every one of them wash their whole bodies in the running water as soon as they rise in the morn, at noon, and before they sleep at night; and if they have not such water near their houses as often happens, they will go a good way to it; as for their lice had they the means only they would certainly be as free from them as any inhabitants of so warm a climate could be. Those to whoom combs were given provd this, for those who I was best acquainted with kept themselves very clear while we staid by the use of them; as for their eating lice it is a custom which none but children and those of the inferior people can be chargd with. Their cloths also as well as their persons are kept almost without spot or stain; the superiour people spend much of their time in repairing, dying, &c the cloth, which seems to be a genteel amusement for the ladies here as it is in Europe.
1 The punctuation in this paragraph and the following five is almost entirely by Banks; an indication that he did know the use of punctuation marks, though generally so erratic in their application.
2 pareu.
3 tiputa, in origin a more aristocratic garment than the ahu, which was merely thrown over the shoulders.
It is reckond no shame for any part of the body to be exposd to view except those which all mankind hide; it was no uncommon thing for the richest of the men to come to see us with a large quantity of cloth rolld round their loins, and all the rest of their bodies naked, tho the cloth wrappd round them was sufficient to have clothd a dozn people. The women at sun set always bard their bodys down to the navel, which seemd to be a kind of easy undress to them as to our ladies to pull off any finery that has been usd during the course of the day, and change it for a loose gown and capachin.2
Both sexes shade their faces from the sun with little bonnets of cocoa nut leaves which they make occasionaly in a very few minutes, some have these made of fine matting but that is less common. Of matting they have several sorts, some very fine, which is usd in exactly the same manner as Cloth for their dresses, cheifly in rainy weather, as their cloth will not bear the least wett.3
1 But the pareu was also worn by men (and still is). The maro was an older Polynesian dress, characteristic of the lower social order—a ‘working dress’.
2 The capuchin, a female garment favoured in the eighteenth century, was a cloak and hood imitating the dress of Capuchin friars.
3 Mats of varying degrees of fineness were made from the different sorts of pandanus.
4 Probably he is thinking of the peas of the Pitipitio, Abrus precatorius, a prickly vine; they were much used for ornament.
5 The sweet-scented Tiare, Gardenia taitensis.
I had almost forgot the Oil with which they anoint their heads, monoe2 it is calld in their language, a custom more disagreable to Europeans than any other among them. This is made of Cocoa nut oil in which some sweet woods or flowers are infusd;3 the oil is most commonly very rancid and consequently the wearers of it smell most disagreably, at first we found it so but very little use reconcild me at least very compleatly to it. These people are free from all smells of mortality and surely rancid as their oil is it must be preferrd to the odoriferous perfume of toes and armpits so frequent in Europe.
1 taamu. It is not now known how this plaiting was done. A marginal note in the MS, not in Banks's hand, runs, ‘Jany. 21. 1772 measurd one 6144 feet another 7294 feet’.
2 monoi.
3 Grated sandalwood (Ahi) was much used, and the resulting monoi-ahi was thought of highly as a liniment as well as a hair-dressing.
1 The leaves of the coconut and the pandanus made a very secure thatched roof.
2 teuteu.
3 Banks here over-states; and he does indeed make a modification in his next sentence. The ‘midling people’ appear on the whole to have been quite as virtuous as Banks and his fellows, allowing for the difference between Polynesian and European convention, and a good deal more chaste than some of them. Banks and Cook (as Cook afterwards realized) were observing a society—or portion of a society—undergoing the upheaval caused by the arrival of a strange ship and the availability of the marvellous material, iron, for which ‘virtue’ was no very high payment. Nor were the young women who rushed the ship the leading representatives of Tahitian respectability, though one can hardly blame Banks for not immediately realizing that. Eighteenth century visitors were bound to talk nonsense on this subject. James Morrison, who made the first considerable stay in Tahiti, is a witness all the other way.—See his Journal, pp. 225, 235–7. I have discussed the matter at rather more length in my Note on Polynesian History, in the introduction to Cook I, pp. clxxxvi-viii. Cook himself found more to say on his second voyage.—II, pp. 238–9.
Besides these there are another kind of houses much larger. One in our neighbourhood measurd lengh 162 feet, breadth 28½, high[t] of one of the middle row of pillars 18. These we conjecturd to be common to all the inhabitants of a district and raisd and kept up by their joint labour, of use maybe for any meetings or consultations, for the reception of any visitants of consequence, &c; such we have also seen usd as dwelling houses by the very principal people, some of them much larger than this which I have here describd.1
In the article of food these happy people may almost be said to be exempt from the curse of our forefather; scarcely can it be said that they earn their bread with the sweat of their brow when their cheifest sustenance Bread fruit2 is procurd with no more trouble than that of climbing a tree and pulling it down. Not that the trees grow here spontaneously but if a man should in the course of his life time plant 10 such trees, which if well done might take the labour of an hour or thereabouts, he would as compleatly fulfull his duty to his own as well as future generations as we natives of less temperate climates can do by toiling in the cold of winter to sew and in the heat of summer to reap the annual produce of our soil, which when once gatherd into the barn must be again resowd and re-reapd as often as the Colds of winter or the heats of Summer return to make such labour disagreable.
1 Henry calls these arioi houses, fare-arioi; they seem to have been structures used for general entertainment (though much entertainment was carried on in the open air) and also as guest-houses, fare-manihini.
2 Known as Uru (Artocarpus spp.). There are about forty varieties, and a great breadfruit tree is a noble sight. See Wilder, The Breadfruit of Tahiti (B. P. Bishop Mus. Bull. 50, Honolulu 1928). See pl. 32.
O fortunati nimium sua si bona norint1 may most truly be applied to these people; benevolent nature has not only supplyd them with nescessaries but with abundance of superfluities. The Sea about them in the neighbourhood of which they always live supplys them with vast variety of fish better than what is generaly met with between the tropicks, but these they get not without some trouble; every one desires to have them and there is not enough for all, tho while we remaind in these seas we saw above2 species more perhaps than our own Island can boast of. I speak now only of what is more properly calld Fish; but almost every thing which comes out of the sea is eat and esteemd by these people, Shellfish, lobsters, Crabbs, even Sea insects and what the seamen call blubbers3 of many kinds conduce to their support. Some of the last indeed that are of a tough nature are prepard by suffering them to stink; custom will make almost any meat palatable and the women especialy are very fond of this, tho after they had eat it I confess I was not extreemly fond of their company.
1 A reminder that to be an eighteenth century gentleman with a university education was not necessarily to be secure in the classics. If Banks had given more time to Virgil and less to botany he would have written ‘O fortunatos….’—‘Oh greatly happy, if they but knew their own happiness!’
2 Blank space in the MS.
3 Blubbers: a term generally used by seamen to denote medusae or ‘jellyfish’. Some medusae are still used for food in China; they are preserved in salt or alum, or with the leaves of an oak, then soaked in water for half an hour, cut up and flavoured. They are said to be tender and palatable after such treatment. ‘Sea-insects’ is too vague a term for identification to be possible.
4 There were, and are, many sorts of bananas and lowland plantains, called Meia (Henry lists thirty-four native ones that are cultivated) and mountain plantains (of which she lists eighteen). They differ in colour of leaves, bark and sap. The plantains used to be cooked before eating, which is perhaps why Banks found them but indifferent; his bananas were probably the cultivated ones.
5 The Vi (Spondias dulcis), known by a variety of English names, among them the ‘yellow apple’. See Pl. VI.
6 Umara (Ipomoea batatas). It was spread all over Polynesia and found in South America.
7 Uhi (Dioscorea alata); there was another yam, wild, called Patara (Dioscorea pentaphylla).
8 Taro (Colocasia esculenta).
9 Blank in MS, with an almost illegible word supplied, possibly Arum. P blank, S illegible. Banks seems to refer to another variety of Taro (between thirty and forty varieties, cultivated and wild, are known); probably to Alocasia macrorrhiza, the ‘E ape’ of Parkinson's account, for which a leaf drawing labelled ‘Arum costatum’ was made in 1769, and of which a small example is preserved in the Pocket Book. Hooker misprinted this phrase with a resulting altered meaning.
For tame animals they have Hogs, fowls and doggs, which latter we learn'd to eat from them and few were there of the nicest of us but allowd that a S-Sea dog was next to an English lamb; this indeed must be said in their favour that they live intirely upon vegetables, probably our dogs in England would not eat half as well. Their pork is certainly most excellent tho sometimes too fat, their fowls are not a bit better rather worse maybe than ours at home, often very tough.
1 In the MS the words ‘Eug mallacc’ are written in pencil in a blank, and are but faintly decipherable. They caused some trouble: P blank. S Eug mallec, and the marginal note, referring both to this and to Arum (?), ‘I fear I have not spelt these names right’. Cook, in copying from Banks, was misled, and wrote ‘Eag melloa’, which as a contribution to botany is not very helpful. In making the copy of the journal on which Hooker worked, Miss Turner or the clerk also was deceived, and wrote ‘eng mallow’, which inveigled the great botanist into a footnote suggesting ‘Hibiscus esculentus, Linn?’ (the hibiscus is a mallow). But Banks was referring to the Jambo or Eugenia malaccensis, sometimes called the Malay Apple, a well-known and well-spread tropical fruit, in Tahiti the Ahia. Hooker could have saved himself by a reading of Hawkesworth (II, p. 186), ‘a fruit known here by the name of Jambu and reckoned most delicious’.
2 Pia, Tacca leontopetaloides (L.) O. Ktze (T. pinnatifida Forst. <JDH>), from the rhizome of which was obtained a starchy meal called by the same name, something like arrowroot. (Molyneux the master: ‘Peea a strong white Jelly’.) Salop or saloop was also a starchy meal, from which was made one of the popular eighteenth century drinks; there are numerous references to it in the literature of the time. See pl. 35.
3 Probably Ti (Cordyline terminalis), a sort of ‘cabbage-tree’, some varieties of which had a succulent root. Parkinson lists ‘E tee’ as ‘a large root … counted very good’.
4 Ihi, the Tahitian chestnut, the fruit of the Mape or—its older name—Rata (Inocarpus edulis). Parkinson calls it the ‘E hee or E ratta’—which confuses indefinite article and first syllable.
5 Fara, pandanus or screw-pine, an immensely valuable tree for a number of island purposes.
6 Nono, called by the English the Sour Apple and sometimes known as the Indian mulberry (Morinda citrifolia); its leaves were much used in cookery, to wrap fish. It has a seedy, insipid fruit. See pl. 34b.
7 Nahe (Angiopteris evecta), a small tree-fern, with a large insipid tuberous root.
8 Teve (Amorphophallus campanulatus or Dracontium polyphyllum), a plant resembling the Pia in appearance, which has a bitter tuber, edible when cooked and mashed and strained through water. A small leaf is preserved in the Pocket Book.
As I have mentiond Sour paste I will proceed to de[s]cribe what it is. Bread fruit by what I can find remains in season only 9 or 10 of their 13 months so that a reserve of food must be made for those months when they are without it. To do this the fruit is gatherd when just upon the point of ripening and laid in heaps where it undergoes a fermentation and becomes disagreably sweet; the core is then taken out which is easily done as a small pull at the stalk draws it out intire, and the rest of the fruit thrown into a hole dug for that purpose generaly in their houses; the sides and bottom of which are neatly lind with grass; the whole is coverd with leaves and heavy stones laid upon them. Here it undergoes a second fermentation and becomes sourish in which condition it will keep as they told me many months. Custom has I suppose made this agreable to their palates tho we dislikd it extreemly, we seldom saw them make a meal without some [of] it in some shape or other.
page 345As the whole making of this Mahai1 as they call it depends upon fermentation I suppose it does not always succeed. It is done at least always by the old women who make a kind of superstitious mystery of it. No one except the people employd by them is allowd to come even into that part of the house where it is; I myself spoild a large heap of it only by inadvertenly touching some leaves that lay upon it as I walkd by the outside of the house where it was. The old directress of it told me that from that circumstance it most certainly would fail and immediately pulld it down before my face, who did less regret the mischeif I had done as it gave me an opportunity of se[e]ing the preparation which perhaps I should not otherwise have been allowd to do.2
To this plain diet prepard with so much simplicity salt water is the universal sauce; those who live at the greatest distance from the sea are never without it keeping it in large bamboes set up against the sides of their houses. When they eat a cocanut shell full of it always stands near them, into which they dip every morsel especialy of fish and often leave the whole soaking in it, drinking at intervals large supps of it out of their hands, so that a man may use £½ a pint of it at a meal. They have also a sauce made of the Kernels of cocoa nutts fermented till they dissolve into a buttery paste and beat up with salt water; the taste of this is very strong and at first was to me most abominably nauseous, a very little use however reconcild me intirely to it so much that I should almost preferr it to our own sauces with fish. It is not common among them, possibly it is thought ill management among them to use cocoa nuts so lavis[h]ly, or we were on the Islands at the time when they were scarce ripe enough for this purpose.
Small fish they often eat raw and sometimes large ones. I myself by being much with them learnt to do the same insomuch that I have made meals often of raw fish and bread fruit, by which I learnt that with my stomach at least it agreed as well as dressd and if any thing was still easier of digestion, howsoever contrary this may appear to the common opinion of the people at home.
1 Mahi.
2 Morrison casts a little more light on this incident: ‘The Men and Weomen having each their own trees have also their own Mahee and should a Man who is not the Servant of a Woman toutch even the Covering of the Womans Mahee it is rendered unfit for Her Use, which at once accounts for Sir Joseph Banks's having spoild a quantity which belongd to a Woman by his being desirous to see the nature of the Process of making it and examining the Contents of the pit—which was not only rendered of no use to the Woman but the place in which it was underwent the same fate and no woman Could ever use it afterwards’.—Journal, p. 215.
Their tables or at least apparatus for Eating are set out with great neatness tho the small quantity of their furniture will not admit of much Elegance. I will describe the manner in which one of their principal people is servd; they commonly eat alone unless some stranger makes a second in their mess.
He setts commonly under the shade of the next tree or on the shady side of the house; a large quantity of leaves either of Bread fruit or Banana are neatly spread before him which serves instead of a table cloth, a basket is then set by him which contains his provisions and two cocoa nut shells, one full of fresh water the other of salt. He begins by washing his hands and mouth thoroughly with the fresh water which he repeats almost continualy throughout the whole meal. He then takes part of his provision from the basket. Supose (as it often did) it consisted of 2 or 3 bread fruits, 1 or 2 small fish about as big as a perch in England, 14 or 15 ripe bananas or half as many apples: he takes half a breadfruit, peels of the rind and takes out the core with his nails; he then cramms his mouth as full with it as it can possibly hold, and while he chews that unlapps the fish from the leaves in which they remain tied up since they were dressd and breaks one of them into the salt water; the rest as well as the remains of the bread fruit lay before him upon the leaves. He generaly gives a fish or part of one to some one of his dependants, many of whoom set round him, and then takes up a very small peice of that that he has broke into the salt water in the ends of all the fingers of one hand and sucks it into his mouth to get with it as much salt water as possible, every now and then taking a small sup of it either out of the palm of his hand or the cocoa nut shell. In the mean time one of the standers by has prepard a young cocoa nut by peeling of the outer rind with his teeth (an operation which at first appears very surprizing to Europeans but depends so much upon a sl[e]ight that before we left the Islands many of us were ourselves able to do it, even myself who can scarce crack a nut) which when he chuses to drink he takes from him and boring a hole through the shell with his finger or breaking the nut with a stone drinks or sucks out the water. When he has eat his bread fruit and fish he begins with his plantains, one of which makes no more than a mouthful if they are as big as black page 347 puddings; if he has apples a shell is nescessary to peel them, one is pickd of the ground where they are always plenty and tossd to him, with this he scrapes or cutts off the skin rather awkwardly as he wastes almost half the apple in doing it. If he has any tough kind of meat instead of fish he must have a knife, for which purpose a peice of Bamboo is tossd him of which he in a moment makes one by splitting it transversly with his nail, with which he can cut tough meat or tendons at least as readily as we can with a common knife. All this time one of his people has been employd with a stone pestle and a block of wood beating breadfruit which by much beating and sprinkling with water he Reduces to the consistence of soft paste; he then takes a vessel made like a butchers tray and in it he lays his paste mixing it with either bananas sour paste or making it up alone according to the taste of his master; to this he adds water pouring it on by degrees and squeezing it often through his hand till it comes to the consistence of thick custard; a large cocoa nut shell full of this he then sets before his master who supps it down as we would do a custard if we had not a spoon to eat it with; and his dinner is then finishd by washing his hands and mouth, cleaning the cocoa nut shells and putting any thing that may be left into the basket again.
It may be thought that I have given rather too large a quantity of provision to my eater when I say he has eat 3 bread fruits each bigger than two fists, 2 or 3 fish and 14 or 15 plantains or Bananas, each if they are large 6 or 7 inches long and 4 or 5 round, and conclude his dinner with about a quart of a food as substantial as the thickest unbaked custard; but this I do affirm that it is but few of the many of them I was acquainted with that eat less and many a great deal more. But I shall not insist that any man who may read this should beleive it as an article of faith; I shall be content if politeness makes him think as Joe Millers1 freind said, ‘Well Sir as you say so I beleive it but by g—d had I seen it myself I should have doubted it excedingly’.
1 Joe Miller (1684–1738), a celebrated comedian whose name was given to a popular jest-book published after his death, and was in time linked to any quip, stale or fresh.
The women carefully abstain from eating with the men or even any of the victuals that have been prepard for them. All their victuals are prepard seperately by boys1 and kept in a shed by themselves where they are lookd after by the same boys who attend them at their meals; notwithstanding this when we visited them at their houses the women with whoom we had any particular acquaintance or freindship would constantly ask us to partake of their meals, which we often did, eating out of the same basket and drinking out of the same cup.2 The old women however would by no means allow the same liberty but would esteem their victuals polluted if we touchd them; in some instances I have seen them throw them away when we had inadvertently defil'd them by handling the vessels which containd them.
What can be the motive for so unsocial a custom I cannot in any shape guess, especialy as they are a people in every other instance fond of society and very much so of their women. I have often askd the reason of them but they have as often evaded the question or given me no other answer but that they did it because it was right, and expressd much disgust when I told them that in England men and women eat together and the same victuals; they however constantly affirm that it does not proceed from any superstitious motive, Eatua they say has nothing to do with it. But whatever the motive may be it certainly affects their outward manners more than their principles: in the tents for instance we never saw an instance of the women partaking of our victuals at our table, but we have several [times] seen them go 5 or 6 together into the servants apartment and there eat very heartily of whatever they could find, nor were they at all disturbd if we came in while they were doing [it] tho we had before usd all the intreatys we were masters of to invite them to partake with us. When a woman was alone she would often eat even in our company, but always took care to extort a strong promise that we should not let her countrey people know what she had done.3
1 by boys is substituted for the words indifferently I beleive by either men or women; and the same boys a little farther on from little boys. But even the corrected statement is a puzzling one: women prepared their own food.
2 Cf. p. 266, n. 5 above. This seems to be another proof that Tahitian restrictions were held not to apply to the visitors.
3 A full discussion of ‘eating tapu’ would occupy a good deal of space. The core of it has been succinctly stated by Handy thus: ‘What is known as the “eating tapu”, a custom peculiar to Polynesia, furnishes one of the clearest and simplest illustrations of the working of the system based upon the theory of dualism in nature. This tapu required that men and women and persons of different degrees of sacredness eat part. Since food was capable of acting as a medium to carry psychic influences into the body, it was considered safer for men not to eat in company with women, not to have their food prepared by them, or to employ the same fire or the same utensils…. Since food and womankind were thought to be the two chief mediums through which evil influences could enter and take possession of man, when it was especially desirable to guard against psychic risk, it was necessary to take unusual precautions in the matter of eating’.—Polynesian Religion (B. P. Bishop Mus. Bull. 34, Honolulu 1927), pp. 49, 54.
After their meals and in the heat of the day they often sleep, middle ag'd people especialy, the better sort of whoom seem to spend most of their time in eating or sleeping. The young boys and girls are uncommonly lively and active and the old people generaly more so than the middle ag'd ones, which perhaps is owing to the excessive venery which the heat of the climate and their dissolute manners tempt them to. Diversions they have but few: shooting with the bow is the cheif one I have seen at Otahite which is confind almost intirely to the cheifs; the[y] shoot for distance only with arrows unfledgd, kneeling upon one knee and dropping the bow from their hands at the instant of the arrows parting from it. I measurd a shot that Tubourai Tamite made, 274 yards, yet he complaind that as the bow and arrows were bad he could not shoot so far as he ought to have done. At Ulhietea bows were less common, but the people amusd themselves by throwing a kind of Javelin 8 or 9 feet long at a mark which they did with a good deal of force and dexterity, often striking the body of a plantain tree their mark in the very center,1 but I could never observe that either these or the Otahite people stakd any thing but seemd to contend merely for the honour of victory.
Musick is very little known to them which is the more wonderfull as they are very fond of it. They have only two instruments the flute and the drum. The former is made of a hollow bamboo about a foot long in which is 3 holes; into one of these they blow with one nostril stopping the other with the thumb of the left hand, the other two they stop and unstop with the fore finger of the left and middle finger of the right hand; by this means they produce 4 notes and no more of which they have made one tune that serves them for all occasions, to which they sing a number of songs pehay2 as they call them generaly consisting of two lines affecting a coarse metre and generaly in Rhime. May be they would appear more musical if we well understood the accent of their language but are as downright prose as can be wrote. I shall give two or 3 specimens of songs made upon our arrival:
Te de pahai de parow-a
Ha maru no mina.
1 MS note: ‘Compare with the Acct referred to p 321 & 322’—i.e. 326–7 above.
2 pehe.
E pahah Tayo malama tai ya
No Tabane tonatou whannomiya.
E Turai eattu terara patee whennua toai
Ino o maio Pretane to whennuaia no Tute.1
At any time of the day when they are lazy they amuse themselves by singing these couplets but especialy after dark. Their candles are then lighted which are made of the kernel of a nut abounding much in oil; many of these are stuck upon a skewer of wood one below the other and give a very tolerable light which they often keep burning an hour after dark and if they have many strangers in the house it is sometimes kept up all night—a kind of guard maybe upon the chastity of the ladies who upon such occasions are very shy of receiving any mark of regard from their lovers.
1 It appears impossible to convert these couplets into intelligible and translatable Tahitian, which would at the same time fit into the historical situation of ‘songs made upon our arrival’. It is certainly easy enough to render certain words and phrases—e.g. ‘no Tabane’, ‘of [or perhaps ‘for the sake of’] Banks’; while ‘Pretane to Whennuaia no Tute’ seems to be Pretane (or Paretane) to fenua ia no Tute, ‘Britain, your country, the country of Cook’. The trouble is, as J. R. Forster acutely put it a few years later, in his Observations (p. 402), ‘The numerous vowels require a variation of diphthongs and accents, to produce a multiplicity of sounds, and a nicety of ear to observe all these little distinctions, which often occasioned a material alteration of the sense….’ This ‘variation of diphthongs and accents’ Banks most unfortunately does not give us, and probably could not. Forster goes on to remark (p. 469) that ‘Their verses seem to be regularly divided into feet, and they observe the quantity and express it in singing …. we observed that many words occurred in their poems which were not used in common conversation’. On the same page he himself makes an attempt to mark the quantities of Banks's second pehe (which he had not heard), and by way of translation provides an heroic couplet which shows great invention, but must be taken with so much reserve that it is not given here.
2 By this he must mean rhythms.
3 Once again Banks is using the word heiva rather indiscriminately; it was not the performers but the performance—any sort of diversion or divertissement from a dance by a single performer to a massed ‘ballet’ or a ‘grand Dramatick heiva’, an elaborate piece of miming; or a ceremony bound up with a formal occasion, like the heiva no melua in which Banks himself had taken part.
Besides this they dance especialy the young girls whenever they can collect 8 or 10 together, singing most indecent words using most indecent actions and setting their mouths askew in a most extrordinary manner, in the practise of which they are brought up from their earlyest childhood; in doing this they keep time to a surprizing nicety, I might almost say as true as any dancers I have seen in Europe tho their time is certainly much more simple. This excercise is however left off as soon as they arrive at Years of maturity for as soon as ever they have formd a connection with a man they are expected to leave of Dancing Timorodee1 as it is calld.
One amusement more I must mention tho I confess I hardly dare touch upon it as it is founded upon a custom so devilish, inhuman, and contrary to the first principles of human nature that tho the natives have repeatedly told it to me, far from concealing it rather looking upon it as a branch of freedom upon which they valued themselves, I can hardly bring myself to beleive it much less expect that any body Else shall. It is this that more than half of the better sort of the inhabitants of the Island have like Gomus in Milton enterd into a resolution of enjoying free liberty in love without a possibility of being troubled or disturbd by its consequences; these mix together with the utmost freedom seldom cohabiting together more than one or two days by which means they have fewer children than they would otherwise have, but those who are so unfortunate as to be thus begot are smotherd at the moment of their birth. Some of these people have been pointed out to me by name and on being askd have not denyd the fact, who have contracted intimacies and livd together for years and even now continue to do so, in the course of which 2, 3 or more children have been born and destroyd.
1 There appears to be no single word corresponding to this. Obviously the dance was a matter of light-hearted erotic amusement. The phrases te ai moro-iti or ti moro-iti would mean copulation or a sort of pseudo-copulation. Parkinson, p. 61, gives the meaning of ‘Taimòradee’ as ‘To reel to and fro’.
This custom as indeed it is natural to suppose Owes as we were told its existence cheifly to the men. A Woman howsoever fond she may be of the name of Arreoy and the liberty attending it before she conceives, generaly desires much to forfeit that title for the preservation of her child: in this she has not the smallest influence; if she cannot find a man who will own it she must of course destroy it; and if she can, with him alone it lies whether or not it shall be preserv'd: sometimes it is, but in that case both the man and woman forfeit their title of Arreoy and the privelege annext thereunto, and must for the future be known by the term Whannownow,1 or bearer of children: a title as disgracefull among these people as it ought to be honourable in every good and well governd society. In this case the man and woman generaly live together as man and wife for the remainder of their lives.2
1 fanaunau, degraded.
2 Banks's account of the arioi, that famous society, is true as far as it goes, but naturally-enough it does not go very far. About the best account is in Williamson, Essays in Polynesian Ethnology, pp. 113–35; see also, for its perception into the religious significance of the cult, Moerenhout, Voyages aux Iles du Grand Océan (Paris 1837), I, 499 ff. I have discussed them briefly in my Note on Polynesian History already referred to. They were a society fairly widely-spread in Polynesia, though founded too late to be brought to New Zealand; with functions both secular and religious—if the two can be really separated, in a social system so thoroughly interpenetrated with religion. They were the great actors of ritual, and for the islands the opera, drama and dance rolled into one. The infanticide which was so widely practised seems to have been both an aid to what might be called celibacy, so advantageous to public performers, constantly on the move and a measure of population-control; for in an island economy increase always brought considerable problems. It was natural therefore that the arioi should have divine origin and sanctions, and elaborate gradations and ceremonial observances of their own. Obviously they represented the erotic side of life, but as we have seen, their functions were much wider than that. Purea, Amo, Tupaia (to take only three examples) were all arioi.
The thing in which they shew the most ingenuity is the making and dying of their Cloth: in the description of these especialy the latter I shall be rather diffuse, as I am not without hopes that my countrey men may receive some advantage either from the things themselves or at least by hints derivd from them.
The Material of which it is made is the interior bark or liber of 3 sorts of trees, the Chinese paper mulberry Morus Papyrifera,2 the Breadfruit tree Sitodium altile,3 and a tree much resembling the wild fig tree of the west Indians Ficus prolixa.4 Of the first which is calld by them Äouta5 the finest and whitest cloth is made which is worn cheifly by the principal people, it is likewise the properest for dying especialy with the Colour of red; of the second which is calld by them ooroo6 is made a cloth inferior to the former in whiteness and softness, worn cheifly by people of inferior degree; of the third which is much the most rare is made a coarse harsh Cloth of the colour of the deepest brown paper,7 which is the only one they have that at all resists water. It is much valued, the greatest quantity of it is perfumd and usd by the most principal people as a Morning dress.
1 See below, p. 380.
2 Broussonetia papyrifera (L.) Vent.
3 Artocarpus altilis (Sol.) Fosberg. Hooker and others took utile as the intended specific name; for the problem in nomenclature cf. Merrill, p. 359. See Pl. 32.
4 Ftcus prolixa, the Ora or Aoa; it has little purple figs. That Banks used this and other names when the Journal was written is clear enough; the decision on nomenclature was certainly reached during the progress of the voyage. It is equally clear that Forster pirated this and other names from the Solander MSS.
5 Aute. But Banks is wrong in thinking the ‘finest and whitest cloth’ was made from this; it was what might be called the ‘standard’ raw material, and gave a strong brown cloth.
6 Uru. It was a variety of this, the pu'upu'u, that gave the finest and choicest white cloth; the underbark of the young branches was used.
7 This cloth does not seem to be elsewhere described as coarse and harsh. It was greatly esteemed as a bed-covering. In legend the tree was propagated on the earth from the moon; and so it came to pass, says Henry (p. 49) ‘that ora cloth on earth became the preferred wrapping of the great idols of the marae; it was especially chosen for the god Oro’.
1 The name Tellina gargadia Linn. remains unchanged.
2 The MS has here a marginal note, ‘just contrary to that purpose’. It is not in Banks's hand, and is clearly wrong-headed.
1 These figures are supplied from S. Plate 9 in the second volume of Hawkesworth includes a diagrammatic representation of the furrows on the four faces as numbering 11, 23,43 and 56.
2 hopua.
The cloth itself both thick and thin resembles most the finest cottons in softness especialy in which article it even exceeds them. Its tenderness (for it tears by the smallest accident) makes it very impossible that it can ever be usd in Europe; indeed it is properly adapted to a hot climate; I usd it to sleep in very often in the Islands and always found it far cooler than any English cloth, and that it much prevented perspiration or else, by drying it up immediately, the disagreable sensation of it.
1 Pia.
2 tiputa.
Pl. VII a. Zebrasoma flavescens b. Zanclus cornutus Moorish Idol
c. Rhinecanthus aculeatus Trigger Fish
Tahiti
To begin then with the red, in favour of which I shall premise that I beleive no Voyager has past these seas but he has said something in praise of this colour, the brightness and elegance of which is so great that it cannot avoid being taken notice of by the slightest observer. This colour is made by the admixture of the Juices of two vegetables neither of which in their seperate state have the least tendency to the colour of Red, nor have any Parts of them that I have at least been able to observe any circumstance relating to them from whence any one should be led to conclude that the colour of red was at all latent in them. They are Ficus tinctoria which is calld by them Matte2 the same name as the colour and Cordia Sebestena orientalis calld Etou;3 of these the fruits of the first and the leaves of the second are usd in the following manner.
1 Brown came from a sort of tanning with the bark of more than one kind of tree, especially toa or ironwood; for black the sap of the fei, or mountain plantain, was used, or the cloth was seeped repeatedly in swampy ground beneath the roots of a coconut.
2 Mati. The juice of the berries is yellow. The scientific name, Ficus tinctoria Forst., was certainly founded on its use in dyeing. A Banks and Solander coll., Solander's MS description, and Parkinson's coloured drawing establish this name. See Pl. 33a.
3 Tou, Cordia subcordata Lam. Banks alluded to the difference between the Tahitian plant and the American G. sebestena by his trinomial (which Hooker altered), whereas Parkinson's coloured drawing was labelled simply ‘Cordia sebestena’. See Pl. 33b.
1 Mou or mou-taviri-haari, sword-grass; Cyperus javanensis Houtt. (C. pennatus Lam.) Hooker published the original Banksian specific name as ‘stupeus’ (and I think this is what Banks wrote), evidently interpreting the choice as ‘woolly’; but the word has also been read as ‘strepens’, to signify ‘rustling’ from the sound made by the rubbing of the culms. S stupeus, P stupens. Strepens is certainly a misreading. For the taxonomy of the sp. cf. Seemann, Fl. Vit. 319.
2 Tahinu, Tournefortia argentea L. f.
3 Pohue, the strand-creeping and precipice-festooning vine, Ipomoea pes-caprae. This identification is supported by the Banks and Solander coll. What Banks means by ‘the Eurhe’ is not quite certain, but from what he goes on to say about dyeing cloth, he probably refers to this use of the plant: uri means dark-coloured or black, and his word signifies e [indefinite article] uri. I fancy he underlined the by mistake; it is not underlined in S, though it is in P.
4 Pua, Solanum repandum Forst. f., a shrub. There is another Pua, Fagraea berteriana, a tree sacred to the god Tane, but it was the shrub that Banks meant: Parkinson has a coloured plate labelled with Banks's name and marked ‘Otaheite’.
When the women have been employd in dying cloth they industriously preserve the colour upon their fingers and nails upon which it shews with its greatest beauty. They look upon this as no small ornament and I have been sometimes inclind to beleive that they even borrow the dye of each other merely for the purpose of dying their fingers; whether it is esteemd as a beauty, a mark of their housewifry in being able to dye, or their riches in having cloth to dye I know not.
Of what use this preparation may be of to my Countreymen either in itself or in any hints which may be drawn from an admixture of vegetable substances so totaly different from any thing of the kind that is practis'd in Europe, I am not enough vers'd in Chymistry to be able to guess, I must however hope that it will be of some. The latent qualities of vegetables have already furnishd our most valuable dyes; no one from an inspection of the Plants could guess that any coulour was hid under the herbs of Indigo, Woad, Dyers weed, or indeed the most of the Plants whose leaves are usd in dying, and yet those latent qualifications have when discoverd produc'd Colours without which our dyers could hardly go on with their Trades.
The Painter whoom I have with me tells me that the nearest imitation of the colour that he could mak[e] would be by mixing together vermilion and Carmine, but even that would not equal the delicacy of it tho a body colour, and the Indian only a stain in the way that the Indians use it. I can not say much for its standing: they commonly keep their cloth white till the very time when it is to be us'd and then dye it as if conscious that it would soon fade. I have however usd Cloth dy'd with it myself for a fortnight or three weeks, in which time it has very little alterd itself and by that time the Cloth was pretty well wore. Of it I have also some now in chests which a month ago when I lookd into them had very little alterd their colour; the admixture of fixing drugs would however certainly not a little conduce to its standing.
1 Nono, Morinda citrifolia. Banks confused M. citrifolia, the source of the dye, with a quite different sp. (now properly distinguished as M. forsteri Seem.). Both were illustrated in colour by Parkinson. See Pl. 34b.
They also dye Yellow with the fruits of a tree calld by them Tamanu (Calophyllum Inophyllum)2 but their method I never had the fortune to see; it seems however to be cheifly esteemed by them for the smell which it gives to the cloth, a smell that is more agreable to an Indian than a Europæan nose.
1 Patrick Browne (1720?–90), an Irish physician and student of natural history, and a correspondent of Linnaeus, lived much in the West Indies from 1745; he published his folio Civil and Natural History of Jamaica in 1756. He also compiled catalogues, published and unpublished, of the birds, fishes, and plants, of Ireland and the West Indies. His herbarium, of more than 1000 rare plants, was bought by Linnaeus for eight guineas.
2 Tamanu, Calophyllum inophyllum L. The seed-kernel contains an oil much-esteemed also as a liniment and for perfuming coconut oil. Seemann, who describes the use of the oil, remarks that the round fruits are one of the four kinds most often encountered on the sandy beaches in Polynesia. Guppy (Naturalist in the Pacific 2:434. 1906) treats of this and other spp. comprising beach-drift in tropical latitudes. It is notable that many of the Polynesian economic plants are members of the strand-flora: Hibiscus tiliaceus, Calophyllum inophyllum, Thespesia populnea, etc. Natural factors in their biology, seed structure and the like, supplement their dispersal. See Pl. 34a.
3 Purau, Hibiscus tiliaceus. The bark was soaked, scraped and bleached.
4 vane; they were fine mats, sometimes interwoven with a pattern and fringed, worn by the arii at festivals or offered to the gods.
5 The Fara-paeore, which had long leaves without the thorns characteristic of the other Fara. It has neither flower nor fruit. Banks must have seen other varieties, because he refers above (p. 343) to the ‘fruit of a tree which they call wharra in appearance like a pineapple’.
6 moea.
Besides these things they make netts for fishing in the same manner as we do, Ropes of about an inch, and lines, of the Poorou; threads with which they sew together their canoes, and also belts, of the fibres of the Cocoa nut, platted either round or fiat very neatly; all their twisting work they do upon their thighs in a manner very dificult to describe and indeed unnecessary, as no European can want to learn how to do an operation which his instruments will do for him so much faster than it possibly can be done by hand.1 But of all the strings that they make none are so excellent as the fishing lines &c. which are made of the bark of a kind of frutescent nettle calld by them Erowa (Urtica argentea)2 which grows in the mountains and is consequently rather scarce; of this they make the lines which are employd to take the briskest and most active fish as bonetos, Albecores3 &c. As I never made experiments with it I can only ascertain its strengh by saying that it was infinitely stronger than silk lines which I had on board made by the best fishing shops in London, tho not so thick by almost half.
1 Any European who nevertheless cares to learn how to do the operation may consult Willowdean C. Handy, Handcrafts of the Society Islands (Bernice P. Bishop Mus. Bull., 42, Honolulu 1927), p. 108.
2 Roa, Pipturus argenteus (Forst.) Wedd. It is represented by both an herbarium coll. and Parkinson's coloured drawing; Banks's name appears in an unfinished unsigned pencil sketch and in Solander's MS. The thread was enormously strong. (Cf. C. Skottsberg, ‘Remarks on Pipturus argenteus and P. incanus of Weddell’, Meddel. Fran Göteberg Trad. 7: 43–63. 1932.)
3 Possibly he means Euthynnus pelamis and Neothunnus macropterus.
4 Banks here has an unusual search for a word; he first writes cleverer, which he discards for better, and in turn discards this.
1 Not the name of a hook; probably a rendering of vitiviti, clever, neat, well-finished
1 These adzes (and other stone tools very often) were made from a black dolerite ound on the island of Maurua (modern Maupiti) 24 miles west of Borabora, where there was a sort of quarry which supplied the whole of the Society Islands with the valued material.
1 vaa. Presumably then Banks's ‘Iv’ is sounded as in give, and the initial I represents the Tahitian particle e.
2 pahi.
These Pahies differ very much in size. I have seen them from 60 to 30 feet in lenght but like the Ivahas they are very narrow in proportion to their lengh: one that I measurd was 51 feet in lengh, page 366 in breadth at the top (a) only 1½ and in the bilge (b) 3 feet, which is about the general proportion; their round sides however make them capable of carrying much greater burthens and being much more safe sea boats, in consequence of which they are usd merely for fighting and making long voyages; for the purposes of fishing and traveling along shore the natives of the Islands where these are cheifly usd have Ivahas. The fighting Pahies which are the largest are fitted in the same manner as the fighting Ivahas, only as they carry far greater burthens the stages are proportionaly larger. The Sailing ones are most generaly fastned two and two together: for this purpose the middling sizd ones are said to be the best and least liable to accidents in stormy weather; in these if we may credit the reports of the inhabitants they make very long voyages, often remaining out from home several months, visiting in that time many different Islands of which they repeated to us the names of near a hundred. They cannot however remain at sea above a fortnight or 20 days tho they live as sparingly as possible, for want of proper provisions and places to put them in safe, as well as water of which however they carry a tolerable stock in hollow Bamboes.
All these imbarkations which indeed are all that I saw us'd in any of the Islands are disproportionaly narrow in respect to their lengh, Which causes them to be so very Easily overset that not even the Indians dare venture in them till they are fitted with a contrivance to prevent this inconvenience; which is done either by fastening two together side by side as has been before describd, in which case one supports the other and they become the most steady Veh[i]cle that can be imagind, or if one of them is to go out single a log of wood fas[t]ned to two poles which are tied across the boat serves to balance it tolerably, tho not so securely but that I have seen the Indians overset them very often. This is upon the same principles as that usd in the flying Proa of the Ladrone Isles describd in Ld Ansons voyage, where it is calld an outrigger; indeed the vessels themselves enough resemble the flying Proa to make it appear at least possible that either that is a very art-full improvement of these or these a very aukward imitation of that.1
1 Walter, in his account of Anson's voyage, spends some pages (339–43 and plan) on what he calls the ‘flying proa’. It differed from the canoes Banks is describing in having a head and stern of identical shape; what was intended to be its lee side was flat, while the windward side was rounded in the ordinary manner.
2 The shovel used to place bread in the oven and withdraw it.
When fitted for sailing they have either one or two Masts fitted to a frame which is above the canoe; they are made of a single stick; in one that I measurd of 32 feet in lengh the mast was 25 ft high which seems to me to be about the common proportion. To this is fastned a sail of about one third longer but narrow, of a triangular shape, pointed at the top and the outside curvd; it is borderd all round with a frame of wood and has no contrivance either for reefing or furling, so that in case of bad weather it must be intirely cut away, but I fancy in these moderate climates they are seldom brought to this necessity; the material of which it is made is universaly Matting. With these sails their Canoes go at a very good rate and lay very near the wind, probably on account of their sail being borderd with wood which makes them stand better than any bowlines could possible do. On the top of this sail they carry an ornament which in taste resembles much our Pennants, it is made of feathers and reaches down to the very water so that when blown out by the wind it makes no inconsiderable shew. They are indeed fond of ornaments in all parts of their boats; they commonly in the good ones have a figure at the stern; in the Paheis which rise rounding both at the head and stern they have a figure at both, and the smaller ivahas have commonly a small carvd pillar standing upon their stern.
Considering these people as intirely destitute of Iron they build these Canoes very well. Of the Ivahas the foundation is always the trunks of one or more trees, hollowd out; the ends of these are Slopd off, and sewd together with the fibres of the Husk of the cocoanut; the sides of them are then raisd with plank, sewd together in the same manner. The Paheis as they are much better embarkations so they are built in a more ingenious manner. Like the others they are laid upon a long keel which however is not above 4 or 5 inches deep; upon this they raise with two ranges of Plank each of which is about 18 inches high and about 4 feet in lengh. Such a number of peices must necessarily be framd and fitted together before they are sewd and this they do very dexterously, supporting page 368 the Keel by ropes made fast to the top of the house under which they work and then each plank by a stantion: so that the canoe is compleatly put together before any one part of her is fastned to that which is next to it, and in this manner supported till the sewing is compleated. This however soon rotts in the salt water: it must be renewd once a year at least, in doing which the canoe is intirely taken to peices and every plank examind, by which means they are always in good repair. The best of them are however very leaky for as they use no calking the water must run in at every hole through which the sewing is past; this however is no great inconvenience to them who live in a climate where the water is always warm, and go barefoot.
For the convenience of keeping these Paheis dry we saw in the Islands where they are usd a peculiar sort of houses which were built on purpose for their reception, and put to no use but that; they are built of Poles stuck upright in the ground and tied together at the top so that they make a kind of Gothick arch; the sides of these are compleatly coverd with Thatch down to the ground but the ends are left open. One of these I measurd, 50 paces in lengh, 10 in breadth and 24 feet high, and this was of the midling size.
The people excell much in predicting the weather, a circumstance of great use to them in their short voyages from Island to Island. They have many various ways of doing this but one only that I know of which I never heard of being practisd by Europæans, that is foretelling the quarter of the heavens from whence the wind shall blow by observing the Milky Way, which is generaly bent in an arch either one way or the other: this arch they conceive as already acted upon by the wind, which is the cause of its curving, and say that if the same curve continues a whole night the wind predicted by it seldom fails to come some time in the next day; and in this as well as their other predictions we found them indeed not infallible but far more clever than Europæans.
In their longer Voyages they steer in the day by the Sun and in the night by the Stars. Of these they know a very large part by their Names and the clever ones among them will tell in what part of the heavens they are to be seen in any month when they are above their horizon; they know also the time of their annual appearing and disapearing to a great nicety, far greater than would be easily beleivd by an Europæan astronomer.
For their Method of dividing time I was not able to get a compleat Idea of it, I shall however set down what little I know. In speaking page 369 of Time either past or to come they never use any term but Moons, of which they count 13 and then begin again: this of itself sufficiently shews that they have an Idea of the Solar year but how they manage to make their 13 months agree with it I never could find out: that they do however I beleive because in mentioning the names of months they very frequently told us the fruits that would be in season in each of them, the sort of weather that was usual in them &c. They have also a name for the 13 months collectively but they never use it in speaking of time, they use it only in explaining the mysteries of their religion: in their metaphorical way they say that the Year Tettowmatatayo was the daughter of their cheif Divinity Taroataihetoomoo and that she in process of time brought forth the months, who in their turn produc'd the days,1 of which they count 29 in every month including one on which the moon is invisible. Every one of these has its respective name and is again subdivided into 12 parts containing about 2 hours each, 6 for the day and 6 for the night, each of which has likewise its respective name; in the day time they guess the divisions of these parts very well, but in the night tho they have the same number of divisions as in the day seem very little able to tell at any time which of them it then is, except the cleverer among them who know the stars.
In counting they proceed from 1 to 10, having a different name for each number; from thence they say one more, 2 more &c. till the number 20, which after being calid in the general count 10 more acquires a new name, as we say a score; by these scores they count till they have got 10 of them, which again acquires a new name, 200; these again are counted till they get 10 of them, 2000; which is the largest denomination I have ever heard them make use of and I suppose is as large as they can ever have occasion for, as they can count 10 of these 20,000 without any new term.
1 In the first part of this statement Banks, through his inadequate knowledge of the language, is unintentionally misleading. We may elucidate as follows: (1) ‘a name for the 13 months collectively’, or year, ‘in speaking of time’, did exist: it was matahiti. (2) Omitting this, he plunges us straight into the depths of cosmogony. His ‘Tettomatatayo’ seems to be equivalent to te tau mata a Te A-Io. Te A-Io is a personified notion of ‘reproductive power mingled with procreative urge’; te tau mata, ‘the period beginning’, or ‘the period in-the-beginning’. Hence the whole phrase signifies the time of the first origin of things, as a creative act. (3) His ‘Taroataihetoomoo’ is Ta'aroa-tahi-tumu, ‘Ta-aroa the one (i.e. unique) source’—or, esotericaliy, ‘the Unknowable Maker, the Cause’, What we have, therefore, is a First Cause creating, and moving creatively in, Time, his ‘daughter’—from whom, as Banks goes on to say, issue the months and the days.
Their Language appeard to me to be very soft and tuneable, it abounds much with vowels and was very easily pronounc'd by us when ours was to them absolutely impracticable. I shall instance particularly my own name which I took much pains to teach them and they to learn: after three days fruitless trials I was forc'd to select from their many attempts the word Tabáne, the only one I had been able to get from them that had the least similitude to it. Again Spanish or Italian words they pronouncd with ease provided they ended with a vowel, for few or none of theirs end with a consonant.
I cannot say that I am enough acquainted with it to pronounce whether or not it is copious. In one respect however it is beyond measure inferior to all European languages, which is its almost total want of inflexion both of Nouns and verbs, few or none of the former having more than one Case or the latter one tense. Notwithstanding this want however we found it very easy to make ourselves understood in matters of common necessaries, howsoever paradoxical that may appear to an European.
The[y] have certain Suffixa and make very frequent use of them, which puzzled us at first very much tho they are but few in number. An instance or two may be necessary to make myself understood as they do not exist in any modern European language. One asks another Harre hea? where are you going? the other answers Ivahinera, to my Wives; on Which the first questioning him still farther Ivahinera? to your wives do you say? is answered Ivahinereia, Yes I am going to my wives.1 Here the suffixa era and eia2 save several words to both parties.
1 Properly E haere i hea?, ‘Where are you going?’—I a'u [va]hine ra, ‘To my wives over there’.—I a'u hine ra?—I a'u hine ra ia, ‘To my wives over there aforesaid’.
2 Properly ra and ia.
3 Willem Cornelisz Schouten and Jacob le Maire crossed the Pacific from Cape Horn to Batavia, February-October 1616. The history of the voyage was abstracted by de Brosses in the great work Banks refers to, one of the literary foundations of Pacific exploration in the eighteenth century. Cf. p. 230, n. 2 above.
New Guinea Hissou fish, is found to be the same as the Otahite Eia by the medium of Ica of the Isles of Solomon; Talingan ears, in Otahite Terrea; Limang a hand, Lima or Rima; Paring cheeks Paparea; Isle of Moyse Sou Sou Breasts, Eu; Mattanga Eyes, Mata. They calld us says the author Tata, which in Otahite signifies men in general; besides several more.1
That the people who inhabit this numerous range of Isles should have originaly come from one and the same place and brought with the[m] the same numbers and Language, which latter especialy have remaind to this time not materialy alterd, is in my opinion not at all past beleif, but that the Numbers of the Island of Madagascar should be the same as all these is almost if not quite incredible. I shall give them from a book calld a Collection of voyages by the Duch East India Company Lond. 1703.2 p. 116, where supposing the author Who speaks of ten numbers and has only nine to have lost the fifth their similarity is beyond dispute.
Madagascar | Otahite | Cocos Isle | New Guinea | |
---|---|---|---|---|
1. | Issa | Tahie | Taci | Tika |
2. | Rove | Rua | Loua | Roa |
3. | Tello | Torou | Tolou | Tola |
4. | Effat | Hea | Fa | Fatta |
6. | Enning | Whene | Houno | Wamma |
7. | Fruto | Hetu | Fitou | Fita |
8. | Wedo | Whearu | Walou | Walla |
9. | Sidai | Heva | Ywou | Siwa |
10. | Scula | Ahourou | Ongefoula | Sangafoula |
1 There seems little point in giving the equivalents in modern orthography either of these words or of those in the list of numerals that follows, as Banks's argument rested on the words as he knew them.
2 A Collection of Voyages undertaken by the Dutch East-India Company, for the improvement of trade and navigation. Containing an account of … their discoveries in the East-Indies, and the South Seas…. Translated into English. London 1703.
All the Isles I was upon agreed perfectly as far as I could understand them; the people of Ulietea only chang'd the t of the Otahiteans to a k, calling Tata which signifies a man or woman Kaka, a circumstance which made their Language much less soft.3 The people of Ohiteroa as far as I could understand their words which were only shouted out to us seemd to do the same thing, and add many more consonants and harshness's which made their Language still more untuneable. I shall give a few of their words from whence an Idea may be got of their language.4
Eupo the Head | Booa a hog |
Ahewh the Nose | Moa a fowl |
Roourou the Hair | Eurèe a dog |
Ouiou the mouth | Eùre-Eùre Iron |
Nihëo the teeth | Ooroo Bread fruit |
Arrero the Tongue | Hearee Cocoa nuts |
Meu-eumi the Beard | Mia Bananes |
Tiarraboa the throat | Vaèe wild Plantanes |
Tuamo the shoulders | Poe Beads |
1 Confusion of papers is not necessary as an explanation. The language of Madagascar was in fact part of the Austronesian group, the geographical extent of which Banks might well be surprised at.
2 This passage is an indication that the later course of die voyage had already been discussed.
3 This consonantal change is no longer a feature of the Raiatean dialect, which has become one with the species of neo-Tahitian now spoken all through the islands of French Oceania.
4 Banks's list is interesting, and if allowance is made for the rendering on paper of vowel sounds natural to an eighteenth century Englishman, and for the ambiguity to Europeans of Polynesian consonants (on which those who later reduced the language to writing had themselves to make some rather arbitrary decisions), it gives a very fair equivalent to the Tahitian words he had collected. The other things mainly to be allowed for are the incorporation of the verbal particle e with the noun, and sometimes a little confusion of other parts of speech. Thus Eupo, the head s= [e] upoo; Eurèe, a dog B= [e] uri. Ambiguity of vowel sounds is seen in Ahewh, the nose = ihu; Ahee, a fruit like chestnuts = ihi. Ambiguity of consonants is seen in Ewharre, a house = [e] fare; Whermua, a high island = fenua; Mala-mala, bitter = maramara. Ambiguity in both consonant and vowel is seen in Booa, a hog = puaa; Whettu-euphe, a comet = fetuave. With Warriddo, to steal, and Woridde, to be angry, we seem to have combinations of ua, a particle used in expostulation, (or perhaps, as Davies says, ‘a verb of being’) with riro, to be lost or missed, and riri, to be angry. With such words as Poto, short; Roa, tall; Poe, beads (pearl); Toto, blood, Banks hit on the later missionary rendering which became standard.
Tuah the Back | Poe Matawewwe Pearl |
Öoma the Breast | ahow a garment |
Eu the Nipples | Avee a fruit like apples |
Oboo the Belly | ahee another like Chestnuts |
Rema the arm | Ewharre a house |
Aporema the hand | Whennua a high Island |
Manneow the fingers | Motu a low one |
Mieu the Nails | Toto Blood |
Towhe the Buttocks | Aeve bone |
Hoowhah the thighs | AUeo flesh |
Avai the legs | Mäe fat |
Tapoa the feet | Huru-huru Hair |
Eraou a tree | Miti good |
Ama a Branch | Eno Bad |
Tiäle a flower | A Yes |
Huero fruit | ima no |
Etummoo the stem | Paree ugly |
Aaa the root | Pororee Hungry |
Eiherre herbaceous plants | Pia Full |
Oooopa a pidgeon | Tuhea Lean |
Avigne a parroquet | Timahah Heavy |
A-a another species | Mama Light |
Mannu a Bird | Poto short |
Mora a duck | Roa tall |
Mattow a fish hook | Nenenne sweet |
Toura a rope | Mala-mala bitter |
Mow a shark | Whanno to go Far |
Mahimahi a Dolphin | Harre to go |
Mattera a fishing rod | Arrea to stay |
Eupea a Net | Enoho to remain or tarry |
Mahanna the Sun | Rohe-rohe to be tird |
Malama the Moon | Maa to Eat |
Whettu a star | Inoo to Drink |
Whettu-euphe a Comet | Ete to understand |
Erai the sky | Warriddo to steal |
Eatta a cloud | Woridde to be angry |
Teparahie to beat |
1 Possibly o'ovi arii, ‘chief's leprosy’, supposed to descend on persons who had infringed chiefly tapu; cf. p. 263, n. 2 above. Henry identifies o'ovi arii with scrofula, but that hardly matches the descriptions we have; Davies defines o'ovi as ‘a certain scrophulous disorder’; Andrews as ‘a disease like leprosy indigenous to the islands’.
1 The ulcers of yaws?
2 Henry (op. cit., p. 289) gives the diseases of pre-European Tahiti as o'ovi (scrofula), tutoo (tuberculosis), hotate (asthma) and feefee (elephantiasis). Curiously enough, she does not mention yaws, which was endemic in the islands. ‘Scrofula’ was a very vague and wide medical term in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Cf. p. 375, n. 2 below.
3 The Miro or Amae, Thespesia populnea, a tree regarded as highly sacred and frequently planted about marae.
1 One can only conjecture what Banks means here. Perhaps he was misled through the similarity of opi, gonorrhoea, and o pe, ‘is [something] rotten’—hence rottenness.
2 Venereal disease was certainly carried to Tahiti by some European ship, but by whose it is impossible to say. Wallis's surgeon declared that the Dolphin was quite free of it. Bougainville rebutted with horror the idea that his men were responsible, and said that signs of it were already there on his arrival. Naturally there was great willingness on all hands to shift the responsibility. Cook on his second voyage concluded that it was pre-European. Bligh on his visit in 1789 seems to have been the first to suspect something other than syphilis; his conclusion was that ‘former Navigators’ had ‘assuredly been mistaken’ and that what they thought was ‘confirmed lues’ was scrofula,—Log of the Bounty (London 1937), II, p. 60. Scrofula would give swelling of the glands; but it seems likely that Bligh himself was mistaken, in spite of his careful examination, and that the disease that misled ‘former Navigators’ was yaws, which was contagious, and produced raspberry-like eruptions on the skin not unlike venereal symptoms. Dr S. M. Lambert, A Doctor in Paradise, pp. 30–2, seems to give a clear answer to the problem: ‘It is quite understandable that the early voyagers should have confused yaws and syphilis. That such confusion still persists is reasonable…. Yaws is not a venereal disease, nor is it hereditary…. The treatment for yaws is exactly the same as the treatment for syphilis—arsenical injections’.—On the other hand, it is equally clear that syphilis did come to Tahiti—but when?
Vulnerary herbs they have many, nor do they seem at all nice in the choice of them so they have plenty of such herbaceous plants as yeild mild juices devoid of all acridity, such as chickweed ground-sell &c. in England. With these they make fomentations which they frequently apply to the wound, taking care to cleanse it as often as possible, the patient all the time observing great abstinence; by this method if they have told us true their wounds are curd in a very short time. As for their medicines we learn'd but little concerning them; they told us indeed freely that such and such plants were good for such and such distempers, but it requird a much better knowledge of the language than we were able to obtain during our short stay to understand the method of application even of those they attempted to explain to us.
Their Manner of Disposing of their dead as well as the ceremonies relating to their mourning for them are so remarkable that they deserve a very particular description. As soon as any one is dead the House is immediately filld wiih their relations who bewail their Loss with Loud lamentations, especialy those who are the farthest removd in blood from or who profess the least greif for the deceasd; the nearer relations and those who are realy affected spend their time in more silent sorrow, while the rest join in Chorus's of Greif at certain intervals between which they laugh, talk and gossip as if totaly unconcernd; this lasts till day light on the Morn after their meeting, when the body being shrowded in their cloth is laid upon a kind of Bier on which it can conveniently be carried upon mens shoulders. The preists office now begins: he prays over the body, repeating his sentences, and orders it to be carried down to the sea side; here his prayers are renewd, the Corps is brought down near the waters edge and he sprinkles water towards but not upon it, it is then removd 40 or 50 yards from the sea and soon after brought back and this ceremony repeated which is done several times. In the mean time a house has been built and a small space of ground round it raild in; in the center of this house are posts set up for the supporting of the bier which as soon as the page 377 ceremonies are finishd is brought here and set upon them, where the Corps is to remain and putrifie in state to the no small disgust of every one whose business requires them to pass near it.
These houses of corruption, Tu papow1 as they are calld here, are of a size proportionate to the rank of the Person containd in them; if he is poor they merely cover the bier and these generaly have no railing round them, the largest I ever saw was 11 yards in lengh. They are ornamented according to the abilities and inclinations of the surviving relations, who never fail to lay a profusion of Good Cloth about the body and often almost cover the outside of the house; the two ends which are open are also hung with kind of garlands of the Fruits of the Palm nut (Pandanus) Cocoa nut leaves knotted by the Preists in kind of Mystick knots, and a plant calld by them Ethee no ta Marai (terminalia)2 which is particularly consecrated to funerals. Near the House is also laid fish, fruits and cocoa nut or Common water or such provisions as can well be spard, not that they suppose the dead any way capable of eating this provision, but think that if any of their gods should descend upon that place and being hungry find that these preparations had been neglected he would infalibly satisfy his appetite with the flesh of the dead corps.
1 tupapau was the corpse. The ‘house of corruption’ was fare-tupapau. See Pl. 14.
2 e ti no te moras, a variety of Ti (Cordyline terminalis) known as ti-uti, a sacred tree planted in marae courtyards for the uses of religion.
3 Banks seems to have got his words mixed here; fare, a house; fata, an ‘altar’. The fata would be the bier, already mentioned by Banks, within the temporary house erected for the purpose.
When these ceremonies have been performd for two or three days the men, who till now seemd to be intirely insensible of their loss, begin their part which the Nearest relations take in turns. They dress themselves in a dress so extrordinary that I question whether words can give a tolerable Idea of it, I therefore refer intirely to the annexd figure. In this dress they patrole the woods early in the morn and late at night, preceeded by 2 or 3 boys who have nothing upon them but a small peice of Cloth round their wrists and are smutted all over with Charcoal; these sable emissaries run about their principal in all directions as if in pursuit of people on whoom he may vent the rage inspird by his sorrow, which he does most unmercifully if he catches any body, cutting them with his stick the edge of which is set with sharks teeth, but this rarely or never happens for no sooner does this figure appear than every one who see either him or his emissaries fly inspird with a sort of religious awe, fly with the utmost speed, hiding wherever they think themselves the most safe but by all means quitting their Houses if they lie even near the path of this dreadfull apparition.2
These ceremonies continue for 5 moons decreasing however in frequency very much towards the latter part of that time. The body is then taken down from the ewhatta, the bones washd and scrapd very clean, and buried according to the rank of the person either within or without some one of their Marais or places of publick worship; and if it is one of their Earees or cheifs his Scull is preservd and being wrappd up in fine Cloth is plac'd in a kind of case made for that purpose which stands in the marai. The mourning then ceases unless some of the women who find themselves more than commonly afflicted by the Loss repeat the ceremony of Poopooing3 or bleeding themselves in the head, which they do at any time or in any place where they happen to be when the whim takes them.
1 This shedding of blood may have been propitiatory; but, says Handy (Polynesian Religion, pp. 191, 255) it was also a means of strengthening the bond of blood between the mourners and the deceased; possibly both aspects come into Banks's phrase, ‘an acceptable present’. At the same time one may perhaps suggest that the ceremony was a formalization, and the theory a ‘rationalization’, of one of the oldest and most instinctive ways of expressing grief, in some sort of self-rnutilation. Cutting the body was a well-spread Polynesian custom; as we shall see, in New Zealand it was not confined to the head.
2 Cf. Banks's description of the heiva-tupapau above.
3 Perhaps from pupu, shells, because of the instrument often used (not always a shark tooth). The word tāpū, to cut, comes from the same root.
Religion has been in ages, is still in all Gountreys Cloak'd in mysteries unexplicable to human understanding. In the South Sea Islands it has still another disadvantage to present to any one who has a desire to investigate it—the Language in which it is conveyd, at least many words of it, are different from those usd in common conversation,1 so that tho Tupia often shewd the greatest desire to instruct us in it he found it almost impossible; in short it is only needfull to remember how dificult it would be to reconcile the apparent inconsistencies of our own religion to the faith of an infidel, and to recolect how many excellent discourses are daily read to instruct even us in the faith which we profess, as articles of excuse in my favour when I declare that I know less of the religion of these people than of any other part of their policy. What I do know however I shall here write down wishing that inconsistencies may not appear to the eye of the candid reader as absurdities.
1 i.e. the invocations were traditional, and their meanings partly esoteric, so that even the ordinary Tahkian kept a respectful and compulsory distance when religious ceremony was in progress; at the same time cosmogony was wrapped up with theology, and esoteric, and the esoteric was tapu. Hence what might be called, mildly, certain differences of opinion among modern scholars of the subject.
The First man say they was the Issue of a Connection between two of their inferior deities or Eatuas who at that time inhabited the Earth. He was when first born round like a ball but his mother with great care drew out each Limb and formd him as we now are, after which he was Calld Eothe2 which signifies finishd. When he arrivd at maturity the Stings of nature made him very desirous of Excersising those faculties with which the males of all animals are indued; his mother was the only female he could find and consequently the Object of his attempts; ignorant however what part of her he was in search of he made several unsuccessfull efforts, at Last however chance leading him right he begat a daughter whoom also he compressd and begat another, nor could for several generations have one son; at last however he had one who by the asistance of his many Sisters peopled this world and is the ancestor of us all.
Their Gods are numerous; they are divided into two Classes, the Greater and the Lesser Gods and of each Class are some of Both Sexes. The cheif of all is Tarroati'ettoomoo3 the procreator of all things whoom they emphaticaly stile the Causer of Earthquakes; his Son Tane4 was however much more generaly calld upon as supposd to be the more active deity. The Men worshipd the male Gods and the Women the Females,5 the Men however supply the office of Preist for both sexes.
1 E, more properly Te Tumu, the Source or Cause, the male parent of the gods; and Te Papa, the ‘Earth foundation’, their female parent.
2 e oti; oti to be done or finished. At the same time Banks may have incorporated in this the name Ti'i, the first man. But according to what appears to be the orthodox Tahitian account, it was Taaroa, the original Creator or First Cause (Taaroa-ta'ahitumu) who created man, from Te Papa, or the Earth. One story gives him the aid of Tu, ‘the great artisan’, whom he had himself created to help him in his work. But in Banks's story there appears to be an ingredient from the creation of the god Tane, who was moulded into shape by his mother Atea or Space (or the Sky).
3 Taaroa-ta'ahi-tumu, who figures in all the versions of Polynesian theology with appropriate consonantal changes—Tangahoa, Tangaroa, Kanaloa.
4 Tane, the god of craftsmanship, forests and all growing things, of beauty and—as Tupaia illustrated—favourable weather.
5 This statement is in error; there was no such division.
They beleive in a heaven and a hell, the first they call Tairua l'orai1 the other Tiahoboo.2 Heaven they describe as a place of Great happines and hell is only a place enjoying less of the luxuries of life; to this they say that the souls of the interior people go after death and those of the cheifs and rich men to the other. This is one of the strongest instances to shew that their religion is totaly independent of Morality: no actions regarding their neighbours are supposd to come at all under the Cognizance of the Deity, a humble regard only is to be shewn him and his assistance askd on all occasions with much Ceremony and some sacrafice, from whence are derivd the Perquisites of the Preists.
The Tahowa3 or Preist is here a hereditary Character. They are numerous and all ranks of People have preists among them, the cheif is generaly however the younger brother of some very Good Family and is respected in a degree next to their kings. All ranks of preists are commonly more learned than the laity; their learning consists cheifly in knowing well the names and ranks of the different Eatuas or divinities, the origin of the universe and all its parts &c; these things have been handed down to them in set sentences of which those who are clever can repeat an almost infinite number, in doing which few words occur the same as those usd in common conversation, which greatly increasd the dificulty we found in Gaining a knowledge of their Theology.
Besides religion the Practise of Physick and the knowledge of Navigation and Astronomy is in the Possession of the Preists. The name indeed of preist, Tahowa, signifies a Man of Knowledge, so that even here the Preists Monopolize the greatest part of the learning of the Countrey in much the same manner as they formerly did in Europe; the practise of which gains them profit as well as respect each in his particular order, for each order has preists of its own nor will the preists of the Manahounies4 do any thing for a Toutou5 who is below them in rank.
1 Interpretation here is made difficult by uncertainty over what precisely Banks meant to write: it may have been ‘Tavirua t'orai’, the l being a large uncrossed t. In either case, a meaning is hard to extract. Davies (1851) gives airaua as one of the names of the po or ‘hades’, but doubt has been cast on his correctness. Te rai is the sky or heaven: orai is meaningless. Banks may possibly have joined two separate expressions together.
2 Possibly te aia o Po, the homeland of the goddess of the po or world of darkness—darkness here personified as the great goddess Po-nui.
3 tahua; in general a mechanic or artificer, i.e. someone skilled, and with special knowledge. A priest was properly a tahua-pure, one skilled in prayer; a high priest, tahua-nui or ahua-rahi.
4 manahune.
5 teuteu. Banks makes an error here; the teatea, the hereditary servants of arii, were themselves of manahune families.
If our preists have excelld theirs in persuading us that the Sexes can not come lawfully together without having bought their benediction, they have done it by intermingling it so far with religion that the fear of punishment from above secures their power over us; but these untaught parsons have securd to themselves the profit of two operations without being driven to the necessity of so severe a penalty on the refusal, viz. Tattowing or painting their bodies and Circumsizing. Neither of these can be done by any but preists,4 and as the highest degree of shame follows the wanting either the people are as much necessitated to make use of them as if bound by the highest ties of Religion, of which both customs are totaly independent. For the first they give no reason but that their ancestors did the same, for the other Cleanliness in hot climates always will be a sufficient reason. For both these operations they are paid by every one according to his abilities in the same manner as weddings Christnings &c &c. are paid for in Europe.
1 It might be, but with arii families there was considerable ceremony and feasting; see e.g. Henry, pp. 281–4.
2 This is an overstatement, which seems to be due both to what Banks had heard of the arioi, and to his imperfect acquaintance with the elements of stability in Tahitian society.
3 This again is over-simplification. If Banks's understanding of the situation had been right, there would have been no, or very few, children in Tahiti and the Society Islands, whereas there were plenty. But it is true that infanticide was widespread, and not confined to the arioi. Engaging ‘to contribute his part to their support’ was an idea brought from England and its social code rather than one found in Polynesia, where family relationships sat more easily on the people. In cases of infanticide a mother might be quite as code-bound as a father, as the early missionaries found. But even the code had its modifications—e.g. if a child on delivery was seen by the mother, or heard to cry, it might be spared; and it seems that Teriirere may have owed his existence to the fact that, though Purea and Amo were both arioi, he was delivered by Purea herself. An article by Paul I. Nordmann, ‘Contribution à l'étude de l'infanticide à Tahiti’, in Bulletin de la Société d'Etudes Océaniennes, VI, pp. 337–54, is useful.
4 Both operations called for skill, and tattooing for skill of a high degree. Tatau or tapping’ was carried out by the tatatau or tahua tatau—tatau artist or priest; circumcision or tehe by the tahua tehe.
Near or even within the Marai are one or more large altars raisd upon high posts 10 or 12 feet above the ground which are calld Whatterow:1 on these are laid the offerings, Hogs, dogs, fowls, fruits or what ever else the piety or superfluity of the owner thinks proper to dedicate to the gods.
Both these places are reverencd in the highest degree, no man aproaches them without taking his Cloths from off his shoulders and no woman is on any account permitted to enter them. The women however have Marais of their own where they worship and sacrifice to their Godesses.2
Of these Marais each family of consequence has one which serves him and his dependants; as each family values itself upon its antiquity so are these esteemd. In the Society Isles especialy Ulhietea were some of great antiquity particularly that of Tapodeboatea; the building of these is rough and coarse but the stones of which they are composd immensely large. At Otahite again where either from frequent wars or other accidents many of the most ancient families are extinct they have tried to make them as elegant and expensive as possible, of which sort is that of Oamo describd in the Journal of going round the Island.3
1 fata-rau.
2 This is a mis-statement. Women had places of their own on the family marae. Banks could not become encyclopaedic in the time he had, and he was unable to discriminate (except so far as he goes in his next paragraph) between the public marae, of international or national, or general local importance, on the one hand, and the family or ancestral marae, let alone those devoted to particular callings, on the other. ‘Doctors’, for example, had their own marae and women could be doctors.
3 For an illuminating discussion of the place occupied by the marae in old Polynesian life, see Henry, pp. 119 ff., and for their construction Kenneth P. Emory, Stone Remains in the Society Islands (B. P. Bishop Mus. Bull. 116, Honolulu 1933). Banks was thinking as an Englishman. Elegance and expense had nothing to do with the extinction of ancient families, everything to do with the rivalry of existing families—whence the magnificence of Mahaiatea as a glorification of Teriirere as the head of a family, and the consequent family downfall. The worked stone facings of the Tahitian marae were a later development than the architecture of the Leeward Islands (e.g. Taputapuatea at Raiatea), but the Leeward Islands stuck to their own style. Here the built-up marae were faced with great slabs of limestone set on end; and when it was felt necessary to keep up the architectural prestige of Taputapuatea, a new facing was simply added, of still greater slabs. See Emory, pp. 145 ff.
4 The Reef Heron, Demigretta sacra (Gm.).
5 Halcyon tuta (Gm.). Solander, Z1, calls it Alcedo superstitiosa, with the island name ‘Erurho’—i.e. ruro.
Tho I dare not assert that these people, to whoom the art of writing and consequently of Recording Laws &c. is totaly unknown, live under a regular form of Goverment, Yet the Subordination which takes place among them very much resembles the early state of the feudal laws by which our Ancestors were so long Governd, a System evidently formd to secure the Licentious Liberty of a few while the Greater part of the Society are unalterably immersd in the most abject Slavery.
1 Birds were ata, ‘reflections’ or ‘shadows’ of the gods, and might even be temporarily their incarnations. Thus the heron represented Ti'i, the first man, who became a secondary god. An added reason for the sacredness of kingfishers would be their frequenting of marae, where the flies and small lizards on which they feed were abundant. But they are sacred birds all over the Pacific.
2 Banks's inadequate study and his feudal analogy combine to mislead him here, nor is it just to write as he does in his previous paragraph of ‘licentious liberty’ and ‘most abject slavery’. There were three classes in the Tahitian (and Society Islands) social order: (1) the arii or hui arii, the chiefly ‘family’ or group, (2) the raatira, landed proprietors not of ‘noble’ or chiefly blood, (3) manahune or commoners. Among this third group the teuteu were the hereditary retainers of the arii, not villeins or slaves. Earee ra hie = e arii raid, a high chief; Earee = e arii, an arii.
3 There were three arii rahi, not one—Teriirere of Papara, Vehiatua of Taiarapu, and Tu of Pare. (This summary statement ignores the complicated question of larger political divisions and interests apart from Taiarapu). There was no one ‘Best family’. Banks is thinking of Tu, a far from impressive figure, in spite of his rank, who was much under the influence of Tuteha, his great-uncle, the powerful personality to whom Banks has referred so often above. It was only after Tuteha's death that Tu came into any prominence in island politics and began to show the family ambition that resulted in the installation of ‘kings’ in Tahiti.
4 It is difficult to know what Banks means by ‘districts’; there were nineteen main districts in Tahiti, but many ‘sub-districts’; within them were many more mataeinaa, or people-district groupings, and within them again ancestral sub-divisions under the raatira. No doubt his 100 was merely a rough round-figure equivalent for a large number.
Each of the Earees kept a kind of Court and hade a large attendance cheifly of the Younger brothers of their own family and of other Earees; among these were different officers of the Court, as Heewa no t'Earee Whanno no t'Earee,4 who were sometimes sent to us upon business. Of all these Courts Dootahah's was the most splendid, indeed we were almost inclind to believe that he acted as Locum tenens for Otou the Earee rahie, his nephew, as he livd upon an estate belonging to him and we never could hear that he had any other publick place of residence.5
The Earees or rather the districts which they Possess are obligd in time of a general attack to furnish each their Quota of soldiers for the service of the Publick. Those of the Principal districts which Tupia recolected when added together amounted to 6680 men to which army it is probable that the small Quotas of the rest would not make any great addition.6
1 See p. 384, n. 2 above.
2 ‘Erate’ is dubious: I think Banks must have made a slip in writing ‘Eratera’ or raatira. ‘Towha‘: toofa, a chief ranking nest to an arii.
3 i.e. he learnt of their existence from Tupaia in shipboard conversation, this part of his journal being written up on the voyage south from the islands.
4 S has here a linguistic note: ‘Heowa no t'Earee, or Perspiration of the Earee. A name given to a sort of flying Messenger, who is trusted with messages that require care; and kind of Embassies. Whanno no t'Earee, or Bow of the Earee. Another kind of flying Messenger, who is to go quick with common Messages: not so honourable a Post as the former.
Otaheite Language | English Do |
Heowa | Perspiration } So called from their Employments |
Whanno | Bow } obliging them to use great Expedition’. |
Houa, to be in a state of perspiration; fana, bow: houa/fana no te arii.
5 Great-nephew. Tuteha's elder brother was the father of Teu, the father of Tu. The arii rahi became head of his family immediately on his birth, but pending his arrival at an age to rule effectively, his father or some other great arii nearly related acted as ‘regent’. There appears to have been no conventional ‘age of majority’. Hence Tu, though he seems to have been about 25 at this time, still lived under the shadow of Tuteha—which indicates the timidity of his character. Tuteha evidently took up residence where he liked; his own marae was Maraetaata in the Paea district, which Banks calls Atahourou, and where Banks and Cook had visited him on 28 May, so that Banks's last remark is hard to reconcile with what has gone before.
6 A stray note by Banks, B.M. Add. MS 27889, f. 71, seems to list the ‘Principal districts which Tupia recolected’ (14 in number) and their ‘quotas’. It is headed, however, ‘Forces of Otahite 6780’; while careful addition makes the sum no more than 6280.
Besides these publick wars, which are to be headed by the Earee ra hie, any private difference between two Earees is decided by their own people without at all disturbing the tranquility of the Publick. Their weapons are Slings which they use with great dexterity, pikes headed with the stings of sting Rays, and Glubbs of 6 or 7 feet long made of a very heavy and hard wood.1 With these they fight by their own account very obstinately, which appears the more probable as the Conquerors give no Quarter to Man Woman or Child who is unfortunate enough to fall into their hands during or for some hours after the Battle, that is till their Passion is subsided.
Otahite at the time of Our being there was divided into two Kingdoms, Oporeonoo the larger and Tiarrebo the smaller. Each had its seperate king &c. &c. who were at Peace; the king of Oporeonoo however Calld himself king of both in just the Same manner as most European Monarchs usurp the Title of king over kingdoms over which they have not the least influence.2
It is not to be expected that in a Goverment of this kind Justice can be strictly administerd, we saw indeed no signs of Punishments during our stay. Tupia however always insisted upon it that Theft was punishd with death and smaller crimes in proportion: in cases of Adultery the offenders were in the power of the offended party who if he takes them in the fact frequently kills them both. All punishments however were the business of the injurd party, who if superior to him who committs the crime easily executes them by means of his more numerous attendants; equals seldom chuse to molest each other unless countenancd by their superior who assists them to defend their unjust acquisitions. The cheifs however to whoom in reality all kinds of Property belong punish their dependants for crimes committed against each other, and the dependants of others if caught doing wrong within their districts.3
1 Toa or Aito, ironwood.
2 There is misapprehension here. The two primary geographical divisions of Tahiti were Tahiti-nui or Great Tahiti, and Taiarapu or Tahiti-iti, Little Tahiti. Oporeonoo is the English rendering of Porionuu (or Te Porionuu), the district where Tu was the arii rahi. The English habitually looked for a king wherever they went, hut neither Tu nor Vehiatua of Taiarapu, a much greater man, was a king. What Tu called himself must have been unknown to Banks, as Banks never met him; but there may have been some vain boasting on the part of someone else—quite vain, and quite misleading. All English visitors, from this time on, gave Tu much more attention than was his due, to the natural disgust of the other leading chiefs of the island. Banks was making a shrewd observation that Cook {and others) would have done well to heed.
3 The first volume of the MS Journal ends here.