The Tahitian

Bible

Commemoration of Bricklayer Nott's Monumental Work

From Our Own Correspondent PAPEETE, December 26.

ON December 18, 1835, John Nott, a pioneer English missionary, who had spent 38 years in Tahiti, completed a monumental work —the translation of the Bible into the Tahitian language.

In December, 1935, a special service was held in the Papeete Protestant Church in commemoration of the event.

A similar ceremony was held also by the Seventh Day Adventists.

The celebration of this important event has naturally created considerable in terest, particularly among the natives to

whom the Bible is the only piece of literature available in their own language.

To those Europeans who are acquainted with the early history of the islands — not very many unfortunately, for a con nected account has yet to be written — this notable centenary will bring a vivid reminder of picturesque and stirring days of the past, and of a movement which was destined to bring about tremendous changes in what is now known as French Oceania, and exercise a profound influence over a vast area in the Pacific Ocean.

Tahitian was the first Polynesian dialect to be reduced to writing—the Rarotongan, Marquesan, Hawaiian and Samoan came much later on.

Nott came to Tahiti in 1797 in the ship Duff as one of a party of 39 people sent out by the London Missionary Society to convert the heathen islanders to Christianity. Twenty-five of the company including four ordained ministers, four teen artisans, five women, and two children were landed in the district of Matavai: the rest were distributed in

Tonga, Marquesas islands, and elsewhere.

The mission was well received and pro vided with land for cultivation, while the missionaries found temporary accom modation in a house which had been built for Captain Bligh of H.M.B. Bounty, who was expected to return to Tahiti.

There workshops were set up, seeds planted, and everything possible done to place the mission on a self-supporting basis.

For many years, the work of evange lisation was hampered by the powerful influence of the native priests, by the difficulties of an unknown language, and by the active opposition of renegade foreigners who supplied the natives with guns and ammunition: the God of the missionaries also got the blame for the European diseases brought by whalers and other, passing vessels.

Thefts began to occur with disturbing frequency, especially thefts of iron, of w'hich the natives already had some knowledge—it is supposed from the re mains of Roggeveen’s tender Africaansche Galey, which was wrecked on the island of Takapoto in 1722. The missionaries noted with misgiving that the metal was all being used for making weapons of war, and the situation became so serious that their possessions had to be guarded night and day. At this time, one or two ot the missionaries died of sickness, others returned to New South Wales on passing ships, and still others deserted the cause to marry native women.

Conditions grew more and more threatening as time went on. Political intrigue and tribal wars racked the island and the remaining missionaries were actually in danger of their lives; one of them was murdered and four others stripped of clothing and maltreated.

At length, in 1808, Pomare II was driven out by rebels and forced to take refuge in the neighbouring island of Moorea. The mission establishment at Matavai was destroyed and all the mis sionaries warned by friends in advance departed, with the exception of Nott, who accompanied Pomare to Moorea, and Hayward, who went to Huahine in the Leeward Group.

Work was not resumed in Tahiti till 1817, Pomare —under Nott’s influence — having in the meantime accepted Chris tianity and thus prepared the way.

In this first effort to introduce the Gospel into Tahiti, the bricklayer Nott stands out conspicuously as an example of courage and persistence in the face of enormously difficult and dangerous cir cumstances —attributes which accord him a rightful place with such distinguished pioneer missionaries as John Williams and Moffat.

To Nott’s high moral character and devotion, and to his years of patient and laborious work in translating the Bible, Pastor Paul Vernier paid a very high tribute in his commemorative service, which was all the more appealing and sympathetic because it was rendered in the native tongue, in which he is a master of oratory.

Like many another alien visitor Nott grew to love the Islands and their people, and in 1826 —upon his departure for his one and only return visit to his native England—he exclaimed in Tahitian: “Here is my country; I will never more be separated from it.”

Nott died in 1844, having been in charge of the Tahiti Mission since 1819, and was buried in the Royal enclosure at Arue, about four miles from Papeete.

Captain Loose, pilot of the Lutheran Mission’s Junkers aeroplane, returned to Salamaua, New Guinea, after a brief visit to Sydney, by the last Montoro.