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Title: Savage Men and Beautiful Women: Early representations of Pacific Islanders and representations used


1
Savage Men and Beautiful Women Early
representations of Pacific Islanders and
representations used in contemporary tourism
  • Dr Lynda Newland

2
First Contact
  • First contact with whites was often through
    itinerant sailors and sailors off whaling ships,
    explorers, fishers and traders of beche-de-mer
    and pearl shell, sandalwood cutters,
    blackbirders, beachcombers, missionaries, and,
    later, plantation owners.
  • In representations from Cooks voyages, Pacific
    Islanders tended to be likened to the Ancient
    Greeks and idealised as Noble Savages (Smith,
    1989).

3
Reception of the Rev. J. Williams, at Tanna, in
the South Seas, the day before he was massacred
Attributed to George Baxter, 1841.
4
Early adventurers
  • Adventurer, Frank Hurley, described a longhouse
    in this way
  • Everything was inexpressibly crude and
    primitive. We had entered the Stygian homes of
    prehistoric swamp-dwellers living by the shores
    of a primeval sea Skulls, human bits, and
    tit-bits filled our bone-bag, while axes, knives
    and fabrics were substituted. Surely, indeed,
    Father Christmas had visited the house! Iron and
    steel replaced bone and stone, and a million
    years was bridged in a day! (Hurley cited in
    Thomas, 1992370).

5
Obeyesekeres argument
  • Maori were seen as savage cannibals until the
    Treaty of Waitangi in 1840.
  • Representations of Pacific Islanders as savage
    cannibals then moved north to the Marquesas and
    Fiji (The Cannibal Islands).
  • Such stories were the stuff of seamens tales of
    adventure and bravado.
  • (Obeyesekere,
    1998)

6
Missionaries in the Pacific
  • The LMS sent out The Duff to missionise the
    Pacific.
  • In Fiji, Methodism became widespread after the
    conversion of the high chief, Cakobau.
  • Methodism changed Fijian society. Cannibalism
    and wife-strangling were outlawed. Fijians were
    expected to wear modest clothes according to the
    missionaries sense of morality, etc.

7
Exchange between Cakobau and Mr Hunt
  • If I am first to lotu among my people, I shall
    be first in heaven, shall I not? If you love
    God the most, and serve him the best, you may
    have a higher place in heaven, replied Mr Hunt.
    But, said he, Namosimalua has lotued. Have
    you given him glass windows for his new house,
    and English carpets for his floors, and have you
    sent to England for a vessel for him? He gets
    no riches because he has renounced heathenism.
    We do not come here to give riches to those who
    lotu, but to tell you about God and Jesus Christ,
    that you may love Him, and your souls be saved,
    said Mr H. Then I will not lotu, he replied.
    He then inquired about the resurrection. Mr H
    told him that his body, and the bodies of all
    those he had eaten, would be raised at the day of
    judgement, and if he did not repent, they would
    all be sentenced to the bukuwaqa together.
    Well, replied he, it is a fine thing to have a
    fire in cold weather (Wallis, 1883 62).

8
Missionary views of Solomon Islanders
Taken 1912 (Thomas, 1992)
Taken c.1904-5 (Thomas, 1992)
9
Gaugins Depictions of Tahitian Women
  • Paul Gaugin, The White Horse, 1898
  • And the Gold of their Bodies, 1901,
  • (Ash, 1983)

10
Gaugins Depictions of Tahitian Women
  • Paul Gaugin, Nevermore, 1897 (Ash, 1983)

11
Depictions of Pacific women
Stereoscope photo of a Hawaiian woman pre-1900,
Frank Davey, (Desmond, 1999)
Frank Burnetts A Tahitian Beauty, published
in 1911 (Thomas, 1992)
12
Representations of Pacific Islanders
  • The dominant view of explorers, officials, and
    traders was of a racial hierarchy with white
    Europeans at the top and the Negro races at the
    bottom.
  • Tribal societies were thought to be savage,
    primitive, barbaric, mystically-oriented, like
    children.
  • Women were often represented as over-sexed and
    tempting.

13
Melanesians vs Polynesians
  • Melanesians were often represented as
  • belonging to the Negro race (at the bottom of the
    racial hierarchy)
  • savage, barely human
  • socially degraded ugly and sexually unappealing
    - women.
  • Polynesians were often represented as
  • relatively clever because many Polynesian groups
    practised sedentary agriculture (e.g. Hawaiians)
  • passive, idle, and languorous men (Thomas,
    1992378)
  • sexually alluring - women.

14
Who represents? Why do some representations
become influential?
  • Differences in representations also depended on
    whether the representers were
  • Seafarers, Adventurers
  • Missionaries
  • Tourists
  • The importance of these representations depended
    on how they were circulated in Europe and America
    and whether they matched overarching ideas about
    Pacific Islanders already in those countries.

15
Hotel versions of firewalking
16
Firewalking
17
Firewalking at Beqa, 2001

18
References
  • Ash, Russell 1983 The Impressionists and their
    Art London Orbis Publishing.
  • Bossen, Claus 2000 Festival Mania, Tourism and
    Nation Building in Fiji The Case of the Hibiscus
    Festival in Contemporary Pacific, Vol. 12, No.
    1 123-154.
  • Edmond, Rod 1997 Representing the South Pacific
    Colonial Discourse from Cook to Gaugin Cambridge,
    NY, Melbourne Cambridge University Press.
  • Lindenbaum, Shirley 2004 Thinking about
    Cannibalism in Annual Review of Anthropology
    Vol. 33 475-98.
  • Newland, Lynda 2004 Turning the Spirits into
    Witchcraft Pentecostalism in Fijian Villages in
    Oceania, Vol. 75, No. 1 1-18.

19
References
  • Obeyesekere, Gananath 1998 Cannibal Feasts in
    Nineteenth-Century Fiji Seamens Yarns and the
    Ethnographic Imagination in Cannibalism and the
    Colonial World (eds) Francis Barker, Peter Hulme,
    and Margaret Iversen, Cambridge, NY, Melbourne
    Cambridge University Press.
  • Oosterwal, Gottfried 1978 Introduction in
    Mission, Church, and Sect in Oceania. (eds) D. T.
    H. James A. Boutilier, and Sharon W. Tiffany. Ann
    Arbour, The University of Michigan Press.
  • Smith, Bernard 1989, 1960 European Vision and the
    South Pacific Melbourne, Oxford, Aukland, NY
    Oxford University Press.
  • Thomas, Nicholas 1992a The Inversion of
    Tradition in American Ethnologist, Vol. 19, No.
    2 213-232.

20
References
  • Thomas, Nicholas 1992b Colonial Conversions
    Difference, Hierarchy, and History in Early
    Twentieth-Century Evangelical Propaganda in
    Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol.
    34, No. 2 366-389.
  • Thornley, Andrew 1996 The Legacy of Siloam
    Tahitian Missionaries in Fiji in The Covenant
    Makers Island Missionaries in the Pacific, Suva,
    Fiji Pacific Theological College and USP.
  • Tiffany, S. W. 1978. "The Politics of
    Denominational Organisation in Samoa". Mission,
    Church, and Sect in Oceania. D. T. H. James A.
    Boutilier, and Sharon W. Tiffany. Ann Arbour, The
    University of Michigan Press.
  • Wallis, Mary 1983 (1851) Life in Feejee Five
    Years Among the Cannibals Suva Fiji Museum.
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