Tahitian people

“ But an additional rung must be added to our social ladder of Tahiti, and a sturdy rung at that. The half-caste—especially the French-Tahitian half-caste—is deservedly becoming a power in the land.
The accepted idea of him is that he retains in his composition all the failings of the white man and none of his virtues, but like so many accepted ideas it is entirely erroneous. He is a human being with the failings and virtues of any other, and there is not a doubt that he possesses a physical and mental virility that carries him further than most toward success in the tropics. ”

“ It used to be amazingly lively in Tahiti, in the wild old days. Then, the Tahitian did not know of white men’s luxuries—of tea and sugar and tinned stuffs, lamps and kerosene, hideous calico shirts and gaudy ties, muslin gowns and frilled petticoats for the women, “bits” to make patchwork quilts with, and beds to put the quilts on, and matchwood bungalows to put the beds in, and quart bottles of fiery gin to drink, and coloured silk handkerchiefs to put away on a shelf, and creaking shoes to lame oneself with on Sundays. ”

“ Little Tahiti cannot boast of such mountains, but its tower-like peaks are very striking. The flat land of the Tahitian coast, extending to a width of several miles — with its chain of villages, its fertile gardens, and its belt of palms, sometimes intersected by stream-fed valleys which open on the sea-shore — forms a most pleasing foreground to the grand amphitheatre-like mountain ranges. A good road surrounds the entire island, which is divided into eighteen districts, each under a chief and a municipal council of which he is president. ”

“ A chief difficulty of the makers of the written Polynesian languages was the adjectives. Primitive peoples have not the wealth of these that civilized nations possess, and fine shadings here are often expressed by intonation, grimace, or gesture.
There is no available Tahitian-English lexicon. The London Missionary Society published one before the French seized Tahiti in the forties. It is out of print, and as obsolete as to present-day Tahitian as Dr. Johnson’s once-famous tome is as to English. ”

“ So complete was their destruction that natives of Tahiti have actually visited the museum of the London Missionary Society within the last few years, and there seen, for the first time in their lives, a Tahitian idol. But a dark cloud already skirted the horizon, and the infant church was soon to pass through the purifying furnace of a long, relentless, wearying, and even bitter persecution.
The revolution of 1830 had placed Louis Philippe on the throne of France. ”

“ In one of the larger and more pretentious style of native huts, apparently that of a district chief, we read a proclamation, printed in French and Tahitian on opposite columns, announcing to the inhabitants the definitive annexation of the island and its dependencies; and, after pointing out in glowing colours the great advantages accruing to the natives from the complete establishment of French rule, it wound up with, "Vive la France. Vive Tahiti."
One is much struck by the great scarcity of birds in Tahiti. ”

“ It was in this bay that the ships of the early voyagers found a resting-place, and where on its shore the first white men touched the soil of Tahiti and came face to face with a people who had never heard of a world outside of the islands of the Pacific. The scenery all along this drive is truly tropical. The floral wealth is great and its variety endless. ”

“ Fair as Tahiti was and Paradise as the French regarded it, they were the first to curse it with that infliction which "civilization" has for centuries brought upon the "savage." Sad Tahiti, land of mountain mist, and murmuring stream, of coral reef and tropic palm, and smiling skies was to be henceforth a pest-house for the simple race that knew her for their home. ”

“ So the people of Tahiti were discovered, and converted, and clothed, and taught, and they gave up being Areois, and worshipping heathen gods, and going about without shirts and skirts, and they went frequently to church, and supported their white pastors generously, and began to trade with the Europeans, so that the latter made much money.
They are quite happy and uncomplaining, and manage to have a reasonably good time in a quiet way, but they will die out, and nobody can prevent them. ”

“ These calculations are merely approximative. The Custom House at Papeete has sufficient documents, but it keeps them secret, apparently for political reasons, if we may credit the remark of a Tahitian. "It is not wished to let all the world know that we are not in a prosperous state."
[94] Letter concerning the actual state of the island of Tahiti, addressed to H.M. the Emperor Napoleon III., by Alexander Salmon. London, Effingham Wilson, 1858.
[95] The French garrison in Tahiti and Eimeo (Morea) , including the administrative officials, numbers about 400 men. ”

“ The natives, a childlike people, friendly, courteous and hospitable, are the happiest people on earth, free from care and worries which in other less favored parts of the world make life a drudgery.
Tahiti is the only place in the world where the people are not obliged to work. The forests furnish bread and fruit and the sea teems with fish. The climate is so mild that the wearing of clothing is rather a matter of choice than of necessity, and the bamboo huts that can be made with little or no expense in half a day with the willing help of the neighbors, meet all the requirements of a home. ”

“ The compulsory education introduced into the island applies to children from six to sixteen years of age. The churches are well attended, but I was informed by a German, who has resided in Tahiti for thirty years, that the people attend service more as a matter of amusement than with any intention of obtaining spiritual benefit.
Nearly all of the village shops are kept by Chinamen, and it is needless to say that these shrewd foreigners take undue advantage of the simple, trusting natives, in all of their business transactions. ”

“ I was pleased with nothing so much as with the inhabitants. There is a mildness in the expression of their countenances which at once banishes the idea of a savage; and an intelligence which shows that they are advancing in civilisation. The common people, when working, keep the upper part of their bodies quite naked; and it is then that the Tahitians are seen to advantage. They are very tall, broad-shouldered, athletic, and well-proportioned. It has been remarked that it requires little habit to make a dark skin more pleasing and natural to the eye of a European than his own colour. ”

“ IT is not easy to analyze the magic which cozens every traveler into believing that he is the first to see Tahiti with clear eyes—one feels that it is made up of nature in a mood of unearthly loveliness; of a sense of ancient and unalterable life; of a realization that strange beliefs persist under a semblance of Christianity; of the lure of a race whose confidence the white man can never fully gain. The mail steamers, the wireless, the traders, the scattering of French officials—these things are a mere play of shadows on the surface. ”

“ Nine Englishmen, mostly rude sailors, with ten Tahitian 143women and a girl, and six Tahitian men,—unevenly divided as to sex, whites and Polynesians unable to converse except meagerly, with totally different inheritance and habits,—were there as the experimenters, with no restraint upon passions or covetings except the feeble check of mutual interests. A hamlet in the ripest civilization has difficulty to govern by these. ”

“ Tahitian hospitality is boundless, and the more praiseworthy that the island, although so fertile, produces but a scanty amount of edibles. Bread-fruit is the chief resource; fish, a very important one, the chief dependence of many of the poorer natives. There is little industry amongst them, and on the spontaneous produce of the soil the shipping make heavy demands. Polynesian indolence is proverbial. Very light labour would enable the Tahitians to roll in riches, at least according to their own estimate of the value of money and of the luxuries it procures. ”

“ For Tahiti is smiling and friendly; it is like a lovely woman graciously prodigal of her charm and beauty; and nothing can be more conciliatory than the entrance into the harbour at Papeete. The schooners moored to the quay are trim and neat, the little town along the bay is white and urbane, and the flamboyants, scarlet against the blue sky, flaunt their colour like a cry of passion. They are sensual with an unashamed violence that leaves you breathless. And the crowd that throngs the wharf as the steamer draws alongside is gay and debonair; it is a noisy, cheerful, gesticulating crowd. ”

“ If it is possible to inject our religion into their blood, it must have been accomplished in Tahiti, but in my opinion the efforts of three generations of missionaries have produced a result surprisingly small on this island—the most civilized of the South Pacific—where heathen superstition is far from dead to-day.
"Before the schooners took to Penrhyn Lagoon we used to spend the hurricane season in Papeete; I never cared much for towns; I usually put in the time wandering about the more remote districts. Civilization has barely scratched the inner life of Tahiti. ”

“ Human nature is, of course, the same everywhere: vice and sorrow prevail at Tahiti as in the reeking slums and lanes of great cities. It is only of the outward aspect of things that Lady Brassey speaks, for she saw none other, and assuredly at Tahiti that is fair exceedingly, and well calculated to charm a cultivated taste, to fill a refined mind with memories of beauty.
From Tahiti we pass on to Hawaii, the chief island of the Sandwich group, and the centre of a civilization that may one day influence the direction of the great currents of commerce in the Pacific. ”

“ Tahiti is formed by two distinct mountains of great elevation, which are connected by a long, narrow isthmus of about three miles in width. Consisting as it does of volcanic ridges of inexhaustible fertility, and valleys watered by abundant streams, this island is of much commercial value. Its delightful climate brings to maturity all the products of the tropics, which are nowhere to be found in greater fulness and perfection. Papeete, the capital, is a gay little town, remarkably cosmopolitan in its elements and Parisian in its tone and manners. ”

“ Now the original inhabitants of Tahiti are dying out, and are being replaced by Chinamen, Europeans, and natives from other islands to the north-west. They still, however, till their fields, put out their fishing-canoes in the lagoon, and pull down cocoa-nuts in their season. They still wear wreaths of flowers in their hair, a last relic of a happier existence. [Pg 370] Pigeons coo in the trees, and green and blue and white parrots utter their ear-piercing screams. Horses, cattle, sheep, goats, and swine are newcomers; lizards, scorpions, flies, and mosquitoes are indigenous. ”

“ From the days of Bougainville, its discoverer, down to those of "the Earl and the Doctor," who recently visited it, Tahiti has moved the admiration of voyagers by the charms of its scenery. It lifts the summit of its pyramidal mass out of a wealth of luxuriant vegetation, which sweeps down to the very margin of a sea as blue as the sky above it. Cool verdurous valleys slope gently into its mountain recesses, their swelling declivities loaded with groves of bread-fruit and cocoa-nut trees. The inhabitants, physically speaking, are not unworthy of their island-home ”

“ The visions of Tahiti—clean, sweet Tahiti—were coming to him more frequently. And there were the low Paumotus, and the high Marquesas; he saw himself often, now, on board trading schooners or frail little cutters, slipping out at dawn through the reef at Papeete and beginning the long beat through the pearl-atolls to Nukahiva and the Bay of Taiohae, where Tamari, he knew, would kill a pig in honor of his coming, and where Tamari’s flower-garlanded daughters would seize his hands and with song and laughter garland him with flowers. ”

“ The Tahitians are by nature kind, affectionate, and their opinions are easily moulded for good or bad, but many of their customs and habits cling to them in spite of civilization and Christianization, for "how many unjust and wicked things are done from mere habit!" ”

“ They were expelled; and after several visits of French men-of-war, who came to obtain redress for this act, and an assurance of free entrance for French subjects, the island was taken possession of by a French squadron in 1843, and Queen Pomare, daughter of Pomare II., was de facto deposed. The island has been ever since under the dominion of France. Tahiti is now in a flourishing condition, and exports a considerable quantity of cotton, cocoanuts, and vanilla.
The majority of the natives still profess the Protestant religion. ”

“ It almost seems as though the Tahitians had attained the utmost pitch of their civilization, and thence, in obedience to a mysterious natural law, have been compelled, like so many other coloured races, to surrender this lovely abode to a more energetic and self-developing race, till the appalling doom befalls them of being erased from the list of nations! ”

“ In Tahiti, it was often noticed that men who in the natural state showed neither ability nor eloquence, would in such convulsive delirium burst forth into earnest lofty declamation, declaring the will and answers of the gods, and prophesying future events, in well-knit harangues full of the poetic figure and metaphor of the professional orator. ”