Books, Reviews, writers

Ancient Tahiti, Without Benefit

Of A Lost Caravel

A Very Personal Review, by ROBERT LANGDON

Some seven years ago, when 1 was still in my first year as executive officer of the Pacific Manuscripts Bureau, Australian National Uni versity, I had a visit from Professor Douglas Oliver, professor of anthro pology at Harvard University. I don’t remember why the professor came to see me. But I vividly recall a conver sation we had on a pet subject of his, ancient Tahiti.

The professor, I gathered, had been writing a book on that subject for some years—a book that would at tempt to describe what Tahitian, ie Society Islands, society was like when Captain Wallis of HMS Dolphin discovered those islands in 1767.

During our conversation, I asked Oliver if he had read an article by me in PIM for January, 1968, en titled ‘Were Europeans living in the Eastern Pacific in the 16th century?’

When he confessd that he hadn’t, I explained that the article concerned the discovery at Amanu Atoll, Tuamotu Archipelago, in 1929 of four ancient iron cannon, and that it was my belief that these were relics of a 16th century Spanish shipwreck; that possibly the Spanish crew had survived and intermarried with Islands women; and that over the years they and their descendants had spread to the islands to the westward, including Tahiti.

I added that evidence pointing to wards this conclusion was to be found in the accounts of some of the early European visitors to Tahiti and surrounding islands accounts of islanders with light skins, European features and sometimes red hair and blue eyes.

The professor expressed consider able interest in all this, and remarked that if there really had been Euro pean castaways in the Eastern Pacific in the 16th century, “that would make all the difference”. Afterwards, I gave him a photocopy of my PIM article, which I presume he read and carried back to Harvard.

Not long after this, I was invited

to a conference in Salt Lake City where I gave a paper on ‘European Castaways in the Pacific before Cap tain Cook’. The additional research that this paper called for, as well as subsequent research, convinced me that there was a great deal of evidence to support my theory and that the only way to deal with it was to write a book.

As the book progressed, I some times wondered whether I hadn’t been a bit reckless in telling Oliver about my PIM article, for it seemed to me that once someone with his knowledge of Society Islands litera ture was alerted to the notion of 16th century Spanish castaways, he could scarcely fail to see the same clues to their existence and influence as I did.

Well, Oliver’s book, Ancient Tahitian Society, and my book, The Lost Caravel, have now been pub lished in Australia within a short time of each other. But whereas mine is all about castaways and their influence, that of the professor doesn’t mention a word about them.

The two books therefore provide an unusual example of how two authors can examine a vast body of largely identical material contempora neously and see in it quite different things.

Oliver’s book is in three attrac tively - produced volumes totalling 1,419 pages. It is a formidable per formance —a monument of enormous industry, dedication and patience ex tending over some 20 years.

The first volume, entitled ‘Enthno graphy’, has an introductory chapter plus 12 others which are devoted to: geography and population; cos mology; the daily cycle; primary tools and crafts; grooming; building; boats and travel; food; diversions; sexuality; warfare; and the individual from conception to afterlife.

In the second volume, ‘Social Re lations’, there are chapters on such matters as sex and age; consan guinity; consanguineal rules; class; friendship; cults; and such like.

The last volume, rather slimmer than the others, examines the fortunes of Tahiti’s ‘royal’ Pomare family from 1767 to the establishment of the French protectorate over Tahiti three quarters of a century later. In this, the author tries to determine why the Pomares rose and fell.

Oliver’s book is undoubtedly the most exhaustive study of ancient Society Islands society ever at tempted. Nothing of its kind is ever likely to be attempted again, for on many topics the author has un doubtedly presented almost every significant scrap of information that can be found.

All the information is neatly com partmentalised by topic so that it is easy to refer to. The book will be an invaluable research tool for Pacific scholars.

Yet despite its great value, the book fails, in my opinion, to achieve one of its principal aims. This is to enable scholars interested in com parative studies to understand why, “in customs that were once alike”, the Society Islands came to differ from other Polynesian communities.

As 1 see it, the reason for the book’s failure is explained in Oliver’s very statement of aim. This implies that in the author’s view, all Poly nesian islands of pre-Dolphin times were, in fact, inhabited only by Poly nesians of the same cultural, and, presumably, the same ethnic stock.

But were they?

Apart from the evidence that I have brought forward in favour of an incursion of 16th-century Spaniards, there is data suggesting the arrival of at least two other non-Polynesian groups in the Society Islands before 1767.

One group seems to have come from Rotuma, an isolated island to the north of Fiji, where the ancient culture, including language, was a mixture of several elements, of which one, admittedly, was Polynesian. The other group apparently came from South America.

Teuira Henry’s book, Ancient Tahiti, records a tradition about a “prince of Rotuma” who landed at Bora Bora and established himself; and this is substantiated by the fact that Rotuma was among the islands known to the Raiatean sage Tupaia, who accompanied Cook on his voyage across the Pacific in 1769.

As for the South American in fluence, a great deal of evidence has been presented by Thor Heyerdahl and others in support of this notion.

Some of it has certainly been dis credited; but much still remains un assailed. The sweet potato, for example, has never been explained away.

I, myself, have presented evidence in my book that tends to supstantiate Heyerdahl’s views. This is in the form of an appendix entitled ‘Evidence of a non-Polynesian language in eastern Polynesia’. The appendix draws together a surprisingly large number of scattered references to many linguistic anomalies in the eastern Pacific, particularly the Tuamotus.

Oliver, of course, could not have known about my foray into linguistics when he went to press. However, Heyerdahl’s ideas have been with us For nearly three decades, and Teuira Henry’s book has been around for nearly five.

It therefore seems to me that Oliver should at least have referred to the American Indians hypothesis and to he probable Rotuman connection iomewhere in his 1,419 pages. More mportantly, he should have pre sented his material in a way that vould have allowed for immigrants rom virtually anywhere, for a truly genuine ethnographic description hould have no built-in assumptions.

As Oliver begins with the assump ion that all the Society Islanders vere much the same to start with — ilthough he doesn’t believe that all ame in together—he inevitably caches the conclusion that such ultural differences as existed between >ne group of islands and another ame about through spontaneous de elopment.

He also manages to convince him elf that the three-level class system hat existed in the Society Islands in Captain Cook’s day was due to the tronger islanders overcoming their weaker compatriots over the centuries nd establishing themselves in sepa ate castes, with elaborate titles and eremonies, etc.

“The most widely espoused expla ation for the three-level class /stem,” the professor says, “has een the ‘conquest’ theory, best epito mized by [the American scholar] landy. According to this writer, a

‘maritime dynasty’, possessing a mar kedly different and in many respects ‘superior’ culture, descended upon these islands from the west and estab lished a beachhead settlement at Opoa, Ra’iatea, from which their de scendants eventually spread out and overcame the Islands’ original inhabi tants. Needless to say, I reject this type of explanation as being overly simplistic, undocumented and quite unnecessary,” Oliver adds.

Well, I, myself, reject Oliver’s rejection of Handy’s ideas. On the other hand, I disagree with Handy’s notion that all the various waves of immigrants to the Society Islands in pre-Dolphin times came from the west.

The first wave, in my estimation, emanated from South America, prob ably as many as 1,500 years ago.

Then came invaders from the Tonga/ Samoa area who overcame the first inhabitants and imposed much of their own Polynesian culture on the area. The Rolumans probably came next. Finally, in the early 16th century, a party of shipwrecked Spaniards came from the east and established the ‘maritime dynasty’ that Handy wrote of, I believe Professor Oliver would not have rejected Handy’s ‘conquest’ theory so emphatically if he had taken a greater interest in what early European visitors said the Society Islanders looked like.

But physical anthropology is not the professor’s line human be haviour is. So it is not surprising that he devoted only of his 1,419 pages to the islanders’ physical characteristics.

“Captain Cook’s matter-of-fact de scription ... is a good as any,” he says purblindly in his first statement on this subject. He thereupon quotes a description that Cook wrote in 1769; passes immediately to one by an officer of the Duff in 1797; and then gives two descriptions by scien tists who accompanied Cook on his second and third voyages. That done, he turns to a couple of accounts of albinos and dwarfs—and called it quits.

This is most unsatisfactory, for none of the accounts quoted mentions the red hair, blue eyes and Caucasian features that many of the early Euro pean visitors described. Nor do they indicate that the people of Raiatea and Huahine were almost invariably described as being lighter-skinned than the generality of Tahitians. Nor is there a clue to Cook’s observations (made on his third voyage) that the women of Moorea, Tahiti’s sister island, were “short, dark and gener ally of forbidding features” as well as strikingly different from those of Tahiti.

On the other hand, the five ac counts that Professor Oliver does quote make it quite plain that the Society Islanders were “of various colours”; that the chiefs were fairer and bigger than the commoners; and that there was a “remarkable con trast” between the “robust make and dark colour” of the Tongans and a “sort of delicacy and whiteness” com mon among the Tahitians.

If the professor had really had his critical wits about him when he culled these quotations, he would surely have realised that something more than behavioural factors was needed

to explain all the striking physical

differences.

Such a discovery might then have led him to examine every other de scription of the islanders with the utmost care, and this, in turn, could have resulted in his reaching more or less the same conclusion as I have.

If my conclusions are correct, then Professor Oliver has clearly put in an enormous amount of time and effort to no great purpose, for his book will not enable scholars to understand why variations in culture occurred. Indeed, the book will not even enable them to discover where variations occurred within the Society Islands in most cases, for Oliver has jumbled up most of his descriptions of cultural traits on Tahiti, Raiatea, Bora Bora, etc, as if they were all equally applicable to every island.

They were not.

I regret very much having to write all these adverse comments on a book on which a fellow-investigator has spent a large part of his life.

But I can, at least, plead that the author was forewarned about my views long ago.

And, of course, if he can show, after all, that I'm only talking through my hat, then he can always say so in a review of my book!

(Ancient Tahitian Society. By

Douglas L. Oliver. Three volumes in slip case. Originally published by The Univer sity Press of Hawaii. Our copy from the Australian National University Press, Canberra. $45.)