Exciting Times

For The People

Of Tikopia

The people of Tikopia, the southernmost island of the British Solomon Islands Protec torate, rarely have contact with the world of Europeans because their island is far from the beaten tracks of ships and planes. But lately, things have been different.

EARLY in March, the third chief of Tikopia, Te Ariki Taumako, who had never previously left his home, paid an official visit to Honiara; and on March 12, the island was visited by the French naval vessel Dunkerquoise, the first unit of the French navy to call there since Captain Dumont d’Urville’s Astrolabe in 1828.

Te Ariki Taumako’s visit to Honiara was made in company with Te Ariki Tepukoa, a chief of Anuda (also known as Cherry Island), which is another small and isolated island in the far south of the Solo mons archipelago. The two chiefs were accompanied by their personal representatives and spokesmen, Paa Ngarumea, of Tikopia, and Paa Tafora, of Anuda.

The visitors went first to Nukufero in the Russel] Islands, north-west of Guadalcanal, where about 500 Tiko pians have established a settlement.

They were given a ceremonial wel come, and Te Ariki Taumako was presented with the sum of £230, which, by custom, was owed to him by the people.

First Films In Honiara, the first town they had ever seen, the visitors saw their first motor vehicles, their first big build ings, their first aeroplanes, and their first films—a short comedy and a newsreel on the Gambia indepen dence celebrations.

After some sightseeing in Honiara, the visitors were taken on a flight over the town in the de Havilland Dove aircraft of Megapode Airways, which, they said in an interview later, was the outstanding event of their visit.

They also said they were very happy about the government in the Solomons and grateful for their visit to such a big town.

Before leaving Honiara, Te Ariki

Taumako was presented with pictures of the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh for distribution.

Te Ariki Taumako and Te Ariki Tepukoa are members of the BSIP’s Eastern District Electoral College, which on April 7 elected one un official member to the BSIP’s first partially-elected Legislative Council.

The two chiefs went to Kira Kira at the end of March to await the elections.

Naval Vessel's Visit The visit of the French naval vessel Dunkerquoise to Tikopia was to repatriate a Tikopian from Vanua Lava in the Banks Group of the New Hebrides who had been working on a plantation on that island for eight years.

The Dunkerquoise was on a tour of the northern district of the New Hebrides with the French and British District Agents.

The ship arrived at Tikopia on the morning of March 12 and was given a friendly welcome by the inhabi tants. The visitors found that the Tikopians numbered about 1,000, that they went semi-naked like their ancestors, and that their only trappings of Western civilisation were a school built of local materials, a small dispensary, and a pedal radio.

When the island’s notabilities came on board in the afternoon, they were most interested to examine, in a book recently published in France, drawings of some of their ancestors that had been done by an artist on Dumont d’Urville’s ship in 1828.

Some of the visitors were tattooed in the same fashion as those por trayed by Dumont d’Urville’s artist.

The commander of the Dunker quoise, Lieutenant Glachant, arranged a film show for the Tikopians, which brought an extraordinary number of canoes to the island’s anchorage.

Footnote: Tikopia is chiefly famous as being the place at which Captain Peter Dillon bought a silver sword guard in 1826 which led him to dis cover the fate of La Perouse at Vanikoro, about two days’ canoe voyage to the north-west. The island has an area of about six square miles, is of volcanic formation, and has a crater lake of fresh water. The people are Polynesians, who have retained much of their ancient cul ture. Until about a generation ago, about half of them still practised their old religion—an almost unique state of affairs in Polynesia. The Tikopians are divided into four large kinship groups, each with a hereditary chief. The highest bears the title Ariki Kafika.