R a y m o n d F i r t h has described the reception and
a s s i m i l a t i o n of strangers in Tikopia:
The prote c t i o n a f f o r d e d to an immigrant is fa i r l y well institutionalised. A man who arrives from abroad either as a m e mber of a crew of a canoe or as a castaway is by T i k o p i a custom taken under the p r o t e c t i o n of a chief. He is accorded shelter and food, and general hospitality. He is kno w n as manu, a word m e a n i n g in the most general sense an animal, most commonly a b i r d and more specifically a proteg6 or pet. He assumes a k i n ship relation
30 S.H. El b e r t and T. 31 K e n n e t h Emory, 8 6. 32 op. Monberg, op. c i t ., 369-91* c i t . , 51> R a y m o n d Firth, op. c i t . , K e n n e t h Emory, op. c i t . , 52.
with his benefactor, makes him what gifts he can and performs gardening, fishing and other services as a kind of working guest, in what may be regarded as a universal type of
reciprocity...In the earlier periods with which the traditional tales deal, the chief commonly appointed the immigrant to be one of his ritual elders, giving him a specific title, lands, a dwelling site, and a list of g o d s ... together
with the privilege of performing k a v a . In
addition, and perhaps first of all, he gave the man a wife - sometimes one of his own daughters. The offspring of the union then continued the
succession, and the lineage grew, with the name of the immigrant as its first ancestor.33
Before the lineage was properly established the
children of the immigrant were attached to their mother's clan, who performed the necessary ritual exchange for
34 the m .
The uniform kindness shown on these outliers confirms the traditions of pre-contact times and the later European accounts of hospitality and tolerance in
the major Polynesian island groups. Such traits, in
association with the well-established social mechanisms for the assimilation of strangers, augured well for the
incoming European. But it cannot be assumed that the
relative ease with which strangers of island origins were absorbed into another society, culturally similar to their own, would be found possible in the case of a European of an entirely different racial and cultural
background. The very appearance of a European amounted
33
Raymond Firth, op. 34
I b i d . , 85-6 .
to a cultural shock for the Polynesians, who firmly believed that nothing lay beyond their island world. However, if the initial fear and suspicion on both
sides could be overcome, Polynesian culture possessed the social values and attitudes, as well as the
necessary institutions, to mediate the induction of
35
alien individuals into it.
Part 2. The First Europeans
BALBOA looked out across the Pacific in September 1513 but the honour of being the first European to sail upon it fell to Magellan in November 1520. From then until the end of the seventeenth century the Spanish,
later succeeded by the Dutch, undertook sporadic
exploratory trips. At the beginning of the eighteenth century many islands had still not been sighted by Europeans, but by its close the myth of the great
south land had finally been dispelled and all the major island groups of the Pacific were known to the Western world. Credit for this century of exploration belonged to the English; ultimately to Cook, whose three voyages of discovery between 1768 and 1780 left the
Pacific a mare cognito; although he had been preceded by the Dutchman, Roggeveen, early in the eighteenth
century, and later by Byron, Wallis, Carteret and the Frenchman Bougainville, all of whom sailed in the Pacific
35
A.I. Hallowell, ’American Indians, White and Black: The Phenomenon of Transculturization', Current
, , 36
between 1761 and 1769* A number of small islands and m any reefs remained to be discovered and charted after C o o k but by 1780 enough was k n o w n of the Pacific, its islands and resources, to tempt the first pioneer traders to h azard their ships and cargoes w i t h i n its b o u n d s .
Before the 1760s contact b e t ween the islanders and the Europeans was infrequent and largely
superficial, except for M e n d a n a ' s i l l -fated second voyage. The n o r t herly routes taken by the Spanish
across the Pacific in b o t h directions ha d kept them at a distance from most w e l l - p o p u l a t e d islands, until in J u l y 1595 M e n d a n a di s c o v e r e d the Marquesas. A f t e r a visit of eight or nine days at least 200 inhabitants had been killed either by orders from M e n d a n a or
37
casually by the soldier-settiers on board. Between September and Nove m b e r of the same y ear the inhabitants of Santa Cruz, where M e n d a n a attempted to establish a
38
colony, suffered similar slaughter. F e w atrocities of a comparable magnitude were p e r p e t r a t e d in the islands by Europeans before the present century.
M o s t explorers and their crews lived strictly on board ship or in closely guarded camps ashore, seldom ha v i n g any sustained contact w i t h the islanders. Trade 36
J.C. Beaglehole, The E x p l o r a t i o n of the Pacific (London, 19^-7) > p a s s i m .
37
I b i d . , 81. 38
was usually brisk and easy but such transactions 39
required a minimum of mutual understanding. Furthermore, the explorers regulated bartering very closely in an attempt to ensure that sufficient fresh supplies and water were acquired before the islanders* desire for
cheap manufactured articles was satiated. Until these necessities had been secured the ordinary sailors were forbidden to trade. Their contacts with island women were similarly curtailed as far as it was possible.
Before 1780 the only Europeans to have lived unprotected on the islands were two Spanish Catholic priests left on Tahiti in 1774, both unfitted for the task of
evangelism and too frightened of the Tahitians to establish any meaningful relationship with them; although their interpreter Maximo Rodriquez spoke
40 Tahitian well and gained their confidence.
The balance of interests between the first 4l
Europeans and the islanders was delicate. Ostensibly the whites were dependent on the island populations for food, water and women, but the islanders found that their ability to supply the explorers* wants did
39
The concept of barter was not new to the Polynesians, who had used such methods among themselves long before Europeans arrived.
40
Bolton G. Corney, The Quest and Occupation of
Tahiti by Emissaries of Spain during the years 1772- 1778 (London, 1913) > passim“!
41
W.H. Pearson, *The Reception of European Voyagers on Polynesian Islands 1568-1797’» to be published in
Journal de la Societl des Oceanistes, is a very detailed study of this early contact.
not give them license to steal. Until fresh supplies had been loaded most Europeans were reluctant to
display their superior military strength whatever the provocation. Wallis, however, in 1767 repelled the Tahitians* determined efforts to acquire any European property they could, in two conflicts which left about
42
100 Tahitians dead. Both Bougainville and Cook benefitted from Wallis’s display of strength, when they were in Tahiti in the following year. But as late as 1802, while the Tahitians set a high value on European goods, they still considered their island and culture to be the best and were convinced that the
43