"Puritans in the South Seas"

American Writers Indict Early Missionaries

DR. Louis Wright and Mary Isabel Fry have compiled in this ably written book an astoundingly frank indictment of the old missionary system in Oceania.

The value of “Puritans in the South Seas” lies in the fact, however, that it is written without bias and without sentiment. The collaborators commence with that motley, ill-equipped, though well-intentioned band of Vutf missionaries who arrived in Tahiti in 1797, and con clude their authenticated story with the inglorious, despotic career in Tonga of the Rev. Dr. Shirley Baker. In fact —to use an Americanism with which the authors may or may not be familiar — they have “debunked” the early mission aries in Tahiti, Rarotonga, Samoa, and Hawaii.

One cannot help regretting, neverthe less, that the writers had not made use of the historic material available in the Mitchell Library in. Sydney. In the main, their facts have been compiled from al ready published sources. An invaluable series of letters, journals, and other documents relating to this subject are still awaiting the attention of the his torian.

“The evangelists to the South Seas were for the most part honest, sincere, humourless men, inspired by zeal to do good to the heathen,” say the collabora tors in an epilogue to the L.M.S. mis sionaries. “If their efforts produced more misery than happiness, it was the result of the Puritan definition of felicity. The solemn tradesmen and shopkeepers who dedicated their lives to the missionary cause were convinced that every idolater who died before he heard the Gospel mes sage dropped precipitately into a hell blazing with brimstone.”

Thousands of natives were swept into eternity by contagious disease following the visits of early missionaries. Women were no longer permitted to wear flowers in their hair; female heads were hidden under “coal-scuttle” straw bonnets; those of the opposite sex were decorated with stove-pipe hats. Cricket became an offence. In fact, the old missionaries, often with the highest of ideals possible, wrought havoc in the native culture, and in not a few instances replaced a natural, charming people with a race of hypo crites.

In almost every instance, the attempts to transplant provincial Victorian Eng land into Polynesia were a failure —not financially, perhaps, but certainly disas trous to the hospitable, invariably generous “heathen.”

Men of the type of Henry Nott, of Tahiti, and a few others, are given full credit for faithful service. The authors are by no means unfair; they realise that the missionaries cannot be held respon sible for the ultimate plight of the Poly nesians. As they say: “They merely hastened a process that was inevitable.

The doom of these dwellers in the ‘‘lslands of the Blessed’ was sealed when Euro peans first discovered them. Whalers and other trading ships were already calling at some of the islands when the mis sionaries arrived, and these emissaries of commerce would in time have contamin ated them, if the missionaries had kept out.”

Rarotonga, perhaps, is one of the few islands where the missionaries retained their influence. In Tahiti, of course, their

intolerance towards the Roman Catholics was responsible for French rule there to-day.

“If Christian Rarotongans did not have full bellies it was not the fault of their spiritual leader,” declare the authors.

“Brother Buzacott beamed with pleasure at the sight of his people sitting deftly on chairs, feasting on pork, chicken, turkey, or duck, with civilised vegetables, over all of which a long and pious grace had been said.”

But, most perversely, the population continued to diminish because “the people were often afflicted with gripings in their stomachs and died of strange diseases, in spite of the physic which their missionaries dealt out to them.”

“Puritans in the Pacific” is a mad, sad story of men who, in the main, were often temperamentally and educationally un fitted for their task. On occasion, the missionaries were themselves the most pathetic victims of the system.

To-day, the missionary is better equip ped in every way for his work (particu larly those who have the good sense to take courses in anthropology and eth nology) and mistakes of the past are less likely to be repeated.—Eric Ramsden.

PURITANS IN THE SOUTH SEAS, by Louis B. Wright and Mary Isabel Fry (Henry Holt and Coy., New York). Price, $3 (17/- Australian approx.).

Miss Gladys Hennessey has been ap pointed secretary of the Torres Strait Hospital, Thursday Island, in place of Mr.

E. J. Hennessey, who has retired after many years’ faithful service.