Samoset

“ According to the arrangement which the Pilgrims had made with Samoset, they all left their bows and arrows about a quarter of a mile distant from the town, as the Pilgrims did not deem it safe to admit armed savages into their dwellings. The tools which had been left in the woods, and which the Indians had taken, were also all brought back by these men. The colonists received these natives as kindly as possible, and entertained them hospitably, but declined entering into any traffic, as it was the Sabbath. ”

“ The Samoset had been a trading schooner, when Duncan bought her in San Francisco and made alterations. Her interior was wholly rebuilt, so that the hold became main-cabin and staterooms, while abaft amidships were installed engines, a dynamo, an ice machine, storage batteries, and, far in the stern, gasoline tanks. Necessarily, she carried a small crew. Boyd, Minnie, and Captain Dettmar were the only whites on board, though Lorenzo, the small and greasy engineer, laid a part claim to white, being a Portuguese half-caste. A Japanese served as cook, and a Chinese as cabin boy. ”

“ So after all was done, the Governor conducted him to the brook, and his brother came, and was also feasted, and then conveyed him to the brook, and Master Winslow returned. Samoset and Squanto stayed in the town and the Indians stayed all night in the woods half a mile away. The last of the colonists on board the ship went ashore to remain to-day.
FRIDAY, Mar. 23/Apr. 2
At anchor. A fair day. Some of the ship's
company went on shore. Some of the Indians
came again, and Captain Standish and Master
Allerton went to see the king, and were
welcomed by him. ”

“ For the Samoans I have always had a great admiration and affection. Practically I began my island career in Samoa. More than a score of years before Robert Louis Stevenson went to die on the verdured slopes of Vailima Mountain, where he now rests, I was gaining my living by running a small trading cutter between the beautiful islands of Upolu, Savai'i, and Tutuila, and the people ever had my strong sympathies in their struggle against Germany for independence. ”

“ The centre-piece of all is the high chief himself, Malietoa-Tuiatua-Tuiaana Mataafa, king—or not king—or king-claimant—of Samoa. All goes to him, all comes from him. Native deputations bring him gifts and are feasted in return. White travellers, to their indescribable irritation, are (on his approach) waved from his path by his armed guards. He summons his dancers by the note of a bugle. He sits nightly at home before a semicircle of talking-men from many quarters of the islands, delivering and hearing those ornate and elegant orations in which the Samoan heart delights. ”

“ But the reader must not imagine that the Samoan Group is the only one in the South Pacific where an enjoyable holiday may be spent. The French possession of the Society Islands, of which the pretty town Papeite, in the noble island of Tahiti, is the capital, rivals, if not exceeds, Samoa in the magnificence of its scenery, and the natives are a highly intelligent race of Malayo-Polynesians who, despite their being citizens of the French Republic, never forget that they were redeemed from savagery by Englishmen, and a taata Peretane (Englishman) is an ever-welcome guest to them. ”

“ Samoa still rises silently in moonlight out of the sea of my dreams. I can hear the barbarian orchestra clanging away down in the native village, as Samoan girls and youths, and two or three white men, waltz under the palms just below the plateau, where groves of orange-trees hang their golden fruit amongst dark leaves. As I play the violin the semi-savage people whirl to the wild rhythm of the forest ballroom music of a tribal waltz. ”

“ The future of Samoa should lie thus in the hands of a single man, on whom the eyes of Europe are already fixed. Great concerns press on his attention; the Samoan group, in his view, is but as a grain of dust; and the country where he reigns has bled on too many august scenes of victory to remember for ever a blundering skirmish in the plantation of Vailele. It is to him—to the sovereign of the wise Stuebel and the loyal Brandeis,—that I make my appeal. ”

“ The Polynesian falls easily into despondency: bereavement, disappointment, the fear of novel visitations, the decay or proscription of ancient pleasures, easily incline him to be sad; and sadness detaches him from life. The melancholy of the Hawaiian and the emptiness of his new life are striking; and the remark is yet more apposite to the Marquesas. In Samoa, on the other hand, perpetual song and dance, perpetual games, journeys, and pleasures, make an animated and a smiling picture of the island life. And the Samoans are to-day the gayest and the best entertained inhabitants of our planet. ”

“ Browne, secretary to the Wesleyan Mission, and the man who made the war in the Western Islands and was tried for his life in Fiji, came up, and we had a long, important talk about Samoa. O, if I could only talk to the home men! But what would it matter? none of them know, none of them care. If we could only have Macgregor here with his schooner, you would hear of no more troubles in Samoa. That is what we want; a man that knows and likes the natives, qui paye de sa personne, and is not afraid of hanging when necessary. We don’t want bland Swedish humbugs, and fussy, fostering German barons. ”

“ The other people had come and used that country, and the Hawaiians who occupied it for nothing had been swept away, “where is weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
‘I do not speak of this lightly, because I love Samoa and her people. I love the land, I have chosen it to be my home while I live, and my grave after I am dead; and I love the people, and have chosen them to be my people to live and die with. ”

“ Each primitive people has selected one set of human gifts, one set of human values, and fashioned for themselves an art, a social organisation, a religion, which is their unique contribution to the history of the human spirit.
Samoa is only one of these diverse and gracious patterns, but as the traveller who has been once from home is wiser than he who has never left his own door step, so a knowledge of one other culture should sharpen our ability to scrutinise more steadily, to appreciate more lovingly, our own. ”

“ There's only one thing on earth as beautiful; and that's Samoa by moonlight. That's utterly different, merely Heaven, sheer loveliness. You lie on a mat in a cool Samoan hut, and look out on the white sand under the high palms, and a gentle xcviiisea, and the black line of the reef a mile out, and moonlight over everything, floods and floods of it, not sticky, like Honolulu moonlight, not to be eaten with a spoon, but flat and abundant, such that you could slice thin golden-white shavings off it, as off cheese. ”

“ The trade wind sweeps over the low peninsula and cleanses it from the contagion of the swamp. Samoans have a quaint phrase in their language; when out of health, they seek exposed places on the shore “to eat the wind,” say they; and there can be few better places for such a diet than the point of Mulinuu.
Two European houses stand conspicuous on the harbour side; in Europe they would seem poor enough, but they are fine houses for Samoa. One is new; it was built the other day under the apologetic title of a Government House, to be the residence of Baron Senfft. ”

“ Samoa has been well governed. The people have been forbidden a few perils of civilisation, and for the rest are left pretty well to themselves. Go up from Apia across the mountains, or round the coast, or take a boat over to the other big island, Savaii, and you find them living their old life, fishing and bathing and singing, and never a sign of a white man. They are guaranteed possession of their land. ”

“ It is likely, however, by my judgment, that this epoch of gaiety in Samoa will soon cease; and the fierce white light of history will beat no longer on Yours Sincerely and his fellows here on the beach. We ask ourselves whether the reason will more rejoice over the end of a disgraceful business, or the unregenerate man more sorrow over the stoppage of the fun. For, say what you please, it has been a deeply interesting time. You don't know what news is, nor what politics, nor what the life of man, till you see it on so small a scale and with your own liberty on the board for stake. ”

“ Like many other Polynesian peoples, the Samoans are often quite good-looking and are generally well-formed. Tradition and legend make the Samoan Archipelago the centre from which a large portion of the island-world of the Pacific was peopled. The Samoans have always been noted as sailors and boat-builders. ”

“ The chief Isles of Samoa are Upolu, Savaii, Tutuela and Manua. They are all of volcanic origin, are surrounded by coral reefs and palm-shaded lagoons; from the shore side to the mountain slopes inland grow the dark coco-palms, the beautiful bread-fruit trees, mangroves, plantains and other wild tropical bush and fern-trees, wherein sparkle and flit gorgeous-coloured butterflies, green parrots and cooing droves of Samoan doves. ”

“ The Samoan Islands are perfect in their beauty, and all the conditions, including the ease with which the bare necessaries of life were produced from natural resources, conduced to a dolce far niente sort of existence amongst the natives, by which the whites also became infected.
The Samoan group, which forms the entrepôt of all the islands round where trade is carried on, consists of fourteen islands, of which eight, Savaii, Manono, Apolima, Upolu, Fanuatapu, Manua, Nu'utele, and Nu'ulua, were German—the remainder being British and American. ”

“ The kindliest, handsomest and most amiable people in all the South Pacific, these Samoans.
It was our hope to put up a new record for the Samoa-Fiji run, as we had done for that from the Marquesas to [284] Tahiti, but the flukiness of the wind, which became apparent as soon as we were clear of the harbour, held out little promise of success. The air was abnormally clear and the sky, unusually deep and rich in colour, hardly flecked by a cloud. The sea, owing to the veering tendency of the wind, was light and even. ”

“ These complications interested Stevenson. His first idea had been to stop there but a short time. He now found he wanted to remain in Samoa long enough to write its history.
The Samoans are true Polynesians; a strong and handsome race whose reputation is high among all the people of the Pacific. The large majority have become Christians, but in spite of the influence of the missionaries and the foreign powers who control them, they retain many of their old customs and habits. They are naturally peace-loving in spite of their many wars. ”

“ The house is really splendid; in the rafters in the midst, two carved and coloured model birds are posted; the only thing of the sort I have ever remarked in Samoa, the Samoans being literal observers of the second commandment. At one side of the egg our party sat. a=Mataafa, b=Lady J., c=Belle, d=Tusitala, e=Graham, f=Lloyd, g=Captain Leigh, h=Henry, i=Popo. The x’s round are the high chiefs, each man in his historical position. One side of the house is set apart for the King alone; we were allowed there as his guests and Henry as our interpreter. ”

“ Is it possible for a man in Samoa to be in touch with the great heart of the People? And is it not perhaps a mere folly to attempt, from so hopeless a distance, anything so delicate as a series of papers? ”

“ I had a very pleasant time, and felt extremely at home with the earnest kind-faced man who has added such interest to the sad romance of Samoa, for as the world knows he died there and was buried on the top of Vaea Mountain, and to this day that mountain is looked upon as a sacred spot by the Samoans who loved R. L. Stevenson, and the natives never hunt or fire guns or shoot the birds that roam and sing by that mighty sepulchre, for it is their faith that his songs are still being sung by the birds as the years go by and he sleeps on that mountain top. ”

“ VAILIMA PLANTATION, SAMOAN ISLANDS, OCT. 10TH, 1892.
MY DEAR BURLINGAME, - It is now, as you see, the 10th of October, and there has not reached the Island of Upolu one single copy, or rag of a copy, of the Samoa book. I lie; there has come one, and that in the pocket of a missionary man who is at daggers drawn with me, who lends it to all my enemies, conceals it from all my friends, and is bringing a lawsuit against me on the strength of expressions in the same which I have forgotten, and now cannot see. ”

“ Such horrors as the burial of the living, as practised in Fiji in heathen times, were never dreamt of in Samoa.
In no land is old age more beautiful than here—partly because the tendency is to corpulence in place of leanness; and the eyes retain their clear, piercing brightness, and the countenance a kindly expression, which tells of the powerful good sense for which many of these people have been so remarkable. Certainly they are a handsome and attractive race. ”

“ In travelling in Samoa one need not always rely upon native hospitality. Though most of the white traders at the outlying villages nowadays make nothing beyond a scanty living, they are as a rule very hospitable and pleased to see and entertain white visitors as well as their poor means will allow, and in nine cases out of ten would feel hurt if they were ignored and the native teacher's house visited first; for between the average trader and the native teacher there is always a natural and yet reasonable jealousy. And here let me say a word in praise of the Samoan teacher—in Samoa. ”