IX

At Falealupo, where in due course the Administrator's party proceeded, after leaving Faiaai, the white-bearded Roman Catholic priest who lived there, Father Haller, reported to the Administrator two glaring cases of misconduct on the part of the Resident Commissioner of the island. The first concerned a youth who, for wanton and deliberate murder (he threatened to shoot another youth, loaded a gun, and then shot him dead), was sentenced by the Commissioner to two months for carrying a gun without a licence. This case the Commissioner had not the legal powers to try, and should have referred to the High Court at Apia. The other incident concerned the banishment from his village of Salailua of a chief named Lealaitafea. The chief was summoned before the Commissioner in the pulenuu's house at Salailua, and no charges having been proferred against him, was simply sentenced to banishment from the page 181district for a twelvemonth. The Commissioner—who had just returned from drinking whisky with a trader who had intimated that he was going to make trouble for the chief—then fell dead drunk from his chair to the ground, and was carried off to his bed in full view of hundreds of Samoans in and about the house.

The native, on the advice of other traders, and also of the Gagaemalae missionary referred to in the Faiaai incident, went to Apia to appeal. He got no satisfaction, I need hardly say, from Mr. Griffin, who was responsible for the Commissioner's appointment, nor was he allowed to see the Administrator. When later he broke the banishment order—having been driven ashore at the prescribed place by bad weather when out fishing in a canoe—he was reported by the Faipule and jailed. He was, I should add, out of favour with the London Mission, having previously led a body of natives over to the Wesleyan church.

Nothing was said, when this case came up before the Royal Commission of 1927, of the Resident Commissioner having been drunk. On that point, from a sense of fair-play, Lealaitafea had been advised to keep silent in the first instance by his European advisers. This, however, together with other matters, I proved in December 1924, before a Board of Inquiry. Reference to this inquiry, for which I was responsible, and during which the Commissioner committed suicide, will be found in a document included in the Appendix.¹ The Commissioner was also proved to have been guilty of sodomy with his prisoners and policemen. He had been deported from Tonga for similar offences concerning schoolboys some years previously.

On the two charges proffered by the Roman Catholic priest General Richardson took no action. Perhaps he found them incredible. He had assured me only a week or two before of his esteem for the official, with whom I was already on extremely bad terms. The priest had also stated that he believed the Resident Commissioner to be homo-sexual. To all of this General Richardson had replied, "Very sad! Very sad!" Sodomy, I would add, was a vice practically unknown to the page 182Samoans. It now goes by the name of a New Zealand official, and is believed to be coming into vogue.

I would caution anyone who should refer to the Report of the Royal Commission concerning Laelaitafea, to study the evidence carefully. Exhibits are introduced in such a way as to make it appear that the native had been guilty of various breaches of the peace, which will be found to have no reference to him. No reason was adduced by the Administration for his banishment, save only a vague reference to a dispute concerning the London and Wesleyan missions.