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The Diversions of a Prime Minister

II. — The Coming Of The Foreigners

II.
The Coming Of The Foreigners.

Under a strong central Government, knowing nothing of civil disturbances, never called upon to repel invasions from without, the people had time to digest the new in-page 309stitutions. If their young men wanted excitement, there was Fiji: there they might have their fill of war and rapine, but in Tonga they must obey the chiefs set over them by the gods or brave the consequence of the broken tabu. In those days no Tongan had dared to test the belief. It was not a superstition. They had seen men die whom they knew to have infringed a tabu, and others, cursed by some enemy, had withered away before their eyes. Thus was royal authority strengthened by physical fear-ever the strongest influence with the mob.1

For sixty years the land was at peace. They built great tombs for their chiefs, and turned the islands into vast gardens, so that there was abundance, and rich portions of the first-fruits were presented to the gods. Then Moungatonga, the Tui Haatakalaua, took the Samoan woman Tohuia to wife, and when her son Ngata grew to manhood, Moungatonga grew wearied with the weight of authority, and charged him with the dominion of the people, while he withdrew himself into the honoured obscurity of rank without power. The new temporal king took his title from the sacred soil of Kanokubolu

1 Now that the bugbear of the tabu has been put to flight before the light of Christianity, they have preserved the belief in a changed form. They believe that he who swears falsely, after kissing the Bible, must die. In 1886 a house was burned down by an incendiary, and before the courts could interfere, all the villagers met together for a trial by ordeal. A Bible was brought, and each person took a solemn oath that he or she was innocent of the crime. They took no interest in the judicial inquiry, feeling sure that the culprit would die within a few weeks. Not long afterwards an elderly woman named Ana began to sicken and refuse her food. She grew rapidly worse, and at last confessed that, in a fit of jealousy, she had set fire to the house of her rival. Her end was hastened by the warnings of her relations that if she was guilty of perjury she had no chance of recovery. She was fairly frightened to death.

page 310in Hihifo. At first probably he was the mouthpiece or messenger of the higher chiefs, their Chancellor and perpetual Prime Minister; but the power was destined to grow until it overshadowed the dignity of the heaven-descended Tui Tonga himself.
In Ngata's reign the Tongans first heard of a world outside their own. On May 16, 1616, the two high-
The discovery of Niua-tobutabu by Schouten and Lemaire, 1616 Vide Appendix II (Reduced from a rare Dutch plate in the possession of Dr Corney.)

The discovery of Niua-tobutabu by Schouten and Lemaire, 1616 Vide Appendix II (Reduced from a rare Dutch plate in the possession of Dr Corney.)

pooped
Dutch ships of Schouten and Lemaire anchored at Niua-tobutabu. To the fierce inhabitants they were no visitants from the world of spirits, but men like themselves, possessed of property worth seizing. Under colour of selling cocoa-nuts to the crew they tried to carry off a boat; and one of them was shot dead before they would desist. They then made a general attack upon the ship, page 311and were repulsed with heavy loss. Thus one fact was learned—the strangers could not be openly assailed with safety; and the fame of Schouten's prowess, recorded in a rough poem, may have served to protect his great countryman Tasman.
On January 27, 1643, Abel Tasman anchored off Hihifo
Schouten and Lemaire buying provisions in Futuna, 1616, showing ancient mode of wearing the hair. Vide Appendix II. (Reduced from a rare Dutch plate in the possession of Dr Corney.)

Schouten and Lemaire buying provisions in Futuna, 1616, showing ancient mode of wearing the hair. Vide Appendix II. (Reduced from a rare Dutch plate in the possession of Dr Corney.)

in Tongatabu. The natives crowded on board his ships to barter provisions for iron, but beyond pilfering when unobserved, they did not annoy their visitors. A chief, probably the Tui Tonga, Tabuoji, entertained them very hospitably, and invited them on shore. They found that the country was cultivated like a garden. It was divided by neat reed fences into plantations, within which stood page 312the house of the owner. They saw no weapons and no villages, for the time had not yet come when the alarms of civil war would drive the people together for mutual protection. The age of Fanongonongo Tokoto (making proclamation while reclining) meant the age of peace and plenty rather than the age of a crowded population. Among the presents given to the Tui Tonga was a wooden
An unprovoked attack by Schouten upon a Tongiaki off Niua May 1616. Vide Appendix II. (Reduced from a rare Dutch plate in the possession of Dr Corney.)

An unprovoked attack by Schouten upon a Tongiaki off Niua May 1616. Vide Appendix II. (Reduced from a rare Dutch plate in the possession of Dr Corney.)

bowl, said to be that which, in the Tui Tonga's absence, was used by his subjects to absolve the tabu in the ceremony of moëmoë. Tasman sailed away, and the Tongans saw no more of the foreigners for 124 years. The priceless iron tools they had given them had long been worn out and disappeared, but the memory of their coming, embalmed by one of the native poets, remained fresh to its smallest details. Four kings had reigned and had been laid in their page 313malae when foreigners again set foot on the soil of Tonga. On August 13, 1767, Wallis, fresh from the discovery of Tahiti, brought to for one day at Niua-tobutabu, and gave the people a few nails in exchange for provisions. These gifts, so precious to a people still in the stone age, were at once carried to their suzerain chiefs in the islands to the far southward; and when Captain. Cook landed six years later in Tongatabu, he saw them in the hands of his entertainers.

When the Discovery anchored at Hihifo on the 10th June 1773 the principal chiefs were absent in the islands to the northward, and he saw no one but Latelibulu, the brother of the Tamaha, whom, judging from the honour paid to him, he mistook for the king. Four years later he landed at Namuka in the Resolution and Discovery, and met Finau Ulukalala, whose restless character had raised him from the position of hereditary chief of Vavau to one of greater power than the Tui Kanokubolu himself wielded. Cook thus describes him: "He was tall and thin, and appeared to be about thirty years of age. His features were more of the European cast than any we had seen here." His evident authority in Namuka led Cook at first to suppose that he was king, but when he was confronted with Pau, the Tui Tonga, and performed to him the humble act of moëmoë, he rated him as an impostor of that contemptible kind that pretends to a dignity to which he is not entitled. When, however, he realised in Tongatabu the extent of his influence with the older chiefs, and saw that even the Tui Tonga did homage to his female relative the Tamaha, he abandoned all hope of solving the mystery of the Tongan Constitution, and, for want of a better page 314definition, elevated Finau to the dignity of Commander-in-Chief.

Anxious to keep the visitors to himself, Finau showed them the most lavish hospitality at Haapai, and did all in his power to persuade them to visit Vavau. But the Tui Tonga, attracted by the accounts of the priceless possessions of the strangers, now arrived, and invited them to become his guests at Tongatabu. Finau, nothing abashed at having fallen in his visitors' estimation, followed in his own fleet, and encamped on the shore opposite the little island of Pangaimotu, where the ships were anchored.

The white men were not always conciliatory. The peasants, or serfs, were a noisy, uncouth set, who, when unrestrained by their chiefs, treated the strangers with scant respect, and robbed them whenever they had an opportunity. In their eyes a successful theft was an achievement to be boasted of rather than a crime; and as a serf has no soul, it was a matter of indifference to the chiefs how they were punished. Thieves were flogged almost daily on board the ships without disturbing the friendliness of Finau in the least; indeed he himself recommended this punishment. An officer wrote in his journal: "One was punished with seventy-two lashes for stealing only a knife; another with thirty-six for endeavouring to carry off some drinking-glasses; three with three dozen each for throwing stones at the wooders; but, what was still more cruel, one man, for attempting to carry off an axe, was ordered to have his arm cut to the bone, which he bore without complaining." As no such punishment as seventy-two lashes was allowed in the navy at that time, and the writer was so evidently hostile to his com-page 315mander, it is probable that the severity of the punishments has been exaggerated.

The chiefs owed their visitors no gratitude Every present they had received, every condescension shown to them, had been repaid by liberal gifts of provisions. The ships were filled with treasures as precious in their eyes as gold would have been in the eyes of their visitors, and in a few days they would sail away never to return. Why,
A bo mëe or night dance at Haapai June 1777 (From a steel engraving in the British Museum)

A bo mëe or night dance at Haapai June 1777 (From a steel engraving in the British Museum)

they thought, should they not prevent this? For the details of the conspiracy they had recourse to Finau, who had seen more of the white men than any of the others. Preparations had already been made for the assemblage of a vast concourse for the performance of dances in honour of the visitors: what would be easier than to fall upon the white men during a night dance by torchlight, conceal the bodies, and, when a party came from the ships to look for page 316their commander, to lead them inland and massacre them? The ships thus weakened would be an easy prey. But Finau thought that the attempt should be made by daylight, lest, in the confusion caused by the darkness, they should fail in boarding the ships. When he found that the majority were disinclined to adopt his advice, Finau declared that he would have nothing to do with the scheme, and it was reluctantly abandoned. On Tuesday, June 17, Cook and his officers attended the dances without suspicion, surrounded by nearly 10,000 natives, who, if the signal had been given, would assuredly have succeeded in massacring the whole party.1 The gathering of so vast a crowd in the neighbourhood of the ships could not fail to produce disorder. There was a scarcity of food, and the parties landing for wood and water were insolently plundered. Several turkeys were stolen, and for the first time Cook determined to hold the chiefs responsible for the acts of their serfs. He landed with an armed guard, and without any warning put Finau and Maealiuaki, the Tui Kanokubolu, under arrest in their own house. A number of armed men now assembled with the evident intention of attacking the guard, but Finau, concealing his feelings, ordered them to disperse, and despatched messengers to recover the turkeys. As soon as these returned with the birds the guard was withdrawn, and their friendly relations were resumed. They still dined on board, and continued to send provisions to the captain. But when, a few days later, the muskets of one of the shore parties were stolen, and Cook proceeded on shore to repeat his policy, he found that the chiefs had wisely with-

1 Mariner's Account of the Tonga Islands.

page 317drawn
, and it was not until he had given them solemn assurances of their safety that they consented to return. The stolen arms were eventually recovered through the medium of the chiefs, who were not in the least concerned that one of the thieves, who had been wounded with a ball, was not expected to live.1
Cook now prepared to leave Tonga, but contrary winds detained him long enough to witness the ceremony of the
The great inaji at which Captain Cook was present, June 1777 (From a steel engraving in the British Museum.)

The great inaji at which Captain Cook was present, June 1777 (From a steel engraving in the British Museum.)

inaji, or the presentation of the first-fruits to the gods in the person of the Tui Tonga, their representative on earth. The ceremonial, the dresses, the wooden symbols for the yams, puzzled him extremely. Though forbidden to approach, he forced his way into the inner circle that surrounded the Tui Tonga, and was allowed to remain on the

1 This man was seen alive and well sixteen years later by D'Entrecasteaux-Labillardière.

page 318condition that he bared his shoulders; for the Tongans, then as now, did not expect foreigners to conform to their manners, and were lenient to any breach of their laws committed by a stranger in ignorance. On June 25 he set sail, after a stay of seven weeks, and not many months later met his tragic end in Hawaii from an over-confidence in the natives, which his experience of the Tongans (whom he misnamed the "Friendly Islanders") may have helped to engender.

It seems strange that a people who, to both Tasman and Cook, appeared unaccustomed to the use of arms, should, twenty-two years after the visit of the latter, be found practising all the barbarities of savage warfare. What internal ferment, one asks, can have produced so abrupt a change? Native traditionary history supplies the answer. Intercourse with Fiji was warping the Tongan character.

At the time of Cook's visit increasing and regular intercourse with Fiji was rapidly changing the Tongans for the worse. Ethnologically, between Fiji and Tonga there is a great gulf fixed. The former belong to the great family of the Melanesians; the latter to the pure stock of the light-skinned race, which, for want of a better name, are called the Malayo-Polynesians. The Fijians knew no higher form of society than that of the family or clan, shut up within its own intrenchments, at perpetual war with its neighbours; no nobler occupation than the devising of treachery against their enemies. But generations of peace had dulled the warlike instincts of the Tongans, and allowed their institutions to take a firm root. Timber for sea-going canoes was scarce in Tonga, page 319
A warrior of Fiji.

A warrior of Fiji.

page 320and it was not until the eighteenth century that any but the principal chiefs could fit out expeditions for distant voyages. A little before 1750 several canoes had run down the wind to Lakemba, and their crews, after joining one or other of the local chiefs in war, and gaining him the victory by their superior daring, had taken their share of the spoil, exchanged their small canoes for larger craft, built of vesi from Kambara, and returned to their own country laden with exotic plunder, and boasting of their foreign experiences. Thenceforth an expedition to Fiji became the keystone of a Tongan chief's education, just as in Europe at the same period the "grand tour" was considered essential to the training of an English gentleman; and as our travellers brought back outlandish habits and strange wares, which were admired because they were foreign, so Cook found that the Tongans spoke of their neighbours as their superiors in war and in the useful arts. The cold-blooded treachery that will betray a brother to gratify the thirst for blood; the brutal ferocity that spares neither sex nor age; the depraved lust that is gratified in outrage on the dead; the foul appetite of revenge that will eat the body of a slain enemy,—all these seemed to the young Tongan the badges of a manliness worthy of imitation. He regarded the comparative refinement of his own people as effeminacy, and vied with his fellows in imitating the accomplishments of his more travelled countrymen. It would surprise the Tongan of to-day to hear that his fathers looked up to the Fijians as his superiors. A contempt born of familiarity has taught him to estimate the characteristics of his neighbours at something less than their proper page 321value. The taste for licence engendered by intercourse with Fiji could not but have its effect upon the political situation of Tonga. The young chiefs chafed at their enforced inaction, for there was no scope for personal ambition in a State controlled by so firm a central Government.