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CHAPTER 1

NO OTHER GODS BUT LOVE

Forewarned by swift-paddled canoes from outlying islands of the approach of what they would recall as an "amazing phenomenon," the tawny-skinned occupants of a hundred outrigger canoes peered into a bank of thick morning fog. Slowly the outline of "a floating island" propelled by divine power and inhabited by gods appeared, filling them with "wonder and fear": HMS Dolphin, a 24-gun, 113-foot-long, 508-ton British frigate under the command of thirty-nine-year-old Cornishman Samuel Wallis.

As Wallis strained his own eyes, a sweep ofjagged green peaks emerged through the drifting mist. At the sound of breaking surf ahead he gave orders to begin depth sounding. He, like all his hundred-fifty-strong crew, was exhausted after months of scouring the South Pacific for the fabled continent "Terra Australis Incognita." Ship's master George Robertson described how the glimpse of land "filled us with the greatest hopes imaginable ... We now supposed we saw the long wished for Southern Continent, which has been often talked of but never before seen by Europeans." In fact, that morning ofJune 19, 1767, they had just become the first Europeans to reach Tahiti, the largest of an island archipelago in the South Pacific.* When the fog cleared further the sailors lining the rails saw the high-prowed, thirty-foot-long Tahitian canoes festooned with red feathers racing toward the Dolphin through the surf, the islanders' curiosity and wonder seeming to more than match their own.

A Tahitian stood up in one of the leading canoes and hurled a plantain branch into the sea — unknown to Wallis's men, a priest making a gesture of welcome. Then as the canoes drew closer, "one fine brisk young man" leapt from one, seized hold of the Dolphin's rigging, and scrambled aboard. Others quickly followed. Eager for fresh food, the sailors imitated the grantings of pigs, the flapping and clucking of chickens, and the crowing of cocks. When the Tahitians failed to understand their antics the crew brought out the few turkeys, sheep, and goats they had aboard. The islanders had never seen such creatures. When a goat butted one of them from behind they all dived overboard in fear, one pausing to snatch from a midshipman's head "a gold-laced hat."

Slowly Wallis's men coaxed them back, offering beads and nails. Aboard once more, the Tahitians explored the ship, seizing anything they liked the look of; in Tahitian culture a successful thief was considered to have won the protection of Hiro, a powerful god. With those still in canoes also clamoring vociferously for goods and beginning "to be a little surly," Wallis feared the situation might get out of control and ordered his gunners to fire a warning shot from the Dolphin's cannon. The islanders, who were ignorant of gunpowder, cannon, and muskets, fled back to the shore.

With lookouts posted at the mast tops to watch for surf breaking on reefs and changes of color in the bright water indicating shallows, Wallis began navigating Tahiti's southwestern coast, searching for a safe harbor. He quickly saw enough of the 120-mile-long curving shoreline to realize it was an island and not the much-sought-after great southern continent Terra Australis Incognita (the "Unknown South Land"). However, he and his crew were already struck by the "most beautiful appearance possible to imagine" of Tahiti, its "fine pasture land," rivers, waterfalls, neat settlements with thatched houses "like long farmers' barns," and lush palm groves.

Watching from the shore, some of the Tahitians recalled a recent prophesy by one of their priests following the chopping down of a sacred tree during an intra-island conflict that newcomers of an unknown kind would arrive and that "this land will be taken by them. The old order will be destroyed and sacred birds of the land and the sea will ... come and lament over what the lopped tree has to teach. [The newcomers] are coming upon a canoe without an outrigger."

The islanders grew so suspicious that when a shore party commanded by the Dolphin's Virginia-born master's mate John Gore tried to land from the ship's cutter, they attacked with slingshots. Though Wallis, following his Admiralty orders to invite local inhabitants "to trade and show them every kind of civility and regard," had given strict instructions that the local people were not to be harmed, Gore fired his musket loaded with buckshot at a Tahitian warrior before ordering the cutter back to the Dolphin.

On June 22, the winter solstice in Tahiti when — of course unknown to Wallis — custom forbade canoes to put to sea, Wallis ordered the ship's boats to be lowered to take further soundings, and sailors and scarlet-jacketed marines to go ashore to search for supplies and water. The marines fired more shots at islanders they thought were threatening them in what was only the beginning of a series of further confrontations over the next forty-eight hours. The Tahitians, after unsuccessfully trying to put back on his feet one of their fellows hit by a musket ball, began to believe that the scarlet-coated marines squinting down the barrels of their muskets might be blowing into their weapons and named the muskets pupuhi roa — "breath which kills at a distance." Red was the color of their war god, Oro, who used thunder and lightning to enforce his power. Thus the red-clad marines, with the flash and bang of their weapons, seemed all too likely to be Oro's minions bent on avenging the islanders' disrespect to their gods.

Nevertheless, early on June 24 the Dolphin's crew, by now seeking a safe anchorage in Matavai Bay and having grounded the Dolphin once already to the amusement of the islanders, saw several large war canoes approaching fast. As well as men each carried young women who, standing on high platforms, performed "a great many droll wanton tricks." These included exposing their genitals while their companions shouted and chanted. Wallis's crew, deprived of female company for months, interpreted the "so well proportioned" women's gestures as sexual enticement and rushed to the ship's rails but, in fact, Tahitians believed that by exposing themselves toward the Dolphin the women were opening a portal for their ancestral gods, allowing them to channel their power against the newcomers. As the war canoes drew nearer, some of their occupants furiously whirled slingshots over their heads to discharge stones at the Dolphin and its now sexually aroused crew.

Fearing his ship was again in danger, Wallis first ordered muskets to be fired and then, when the attackers persisted, the firing of cannon loaded with grapeshot and cannonballs. A cannonball split one great war canoe in half. Others were soon splintered and sinking and many aboard them were injured or dying, staining the translucent turquoise water red with blood. Among the wounded, hit in the shoulder by a musket ball, was a young man named Omai, originally from the neighboring island of Raiatea, who would become well known to later European visitors. Ship's master George Robertson wrote of how terrible those on shore must have felt "to see their nearest and dearest of friends dead and torn to pieces in such a manner as I am certain they never beheld before. To attempt to say what these poor ignorant creatures thought of us, would be taking more upon me than I am able to perform." After this admission of the understandable mutual incomprehension that was so often to prevail between islanders and Europeans, he added "some of my messmates thought they would now look upon us as demi Gods, come to punish them for some of their past transgressions."

Wallis now decided to claim Tahiti by right of conquest and went ashore with an armed party to hold a ceremony for the purpose. As the scarlet-coated marines began to drill, the islanders — now seemingly convinced that these new arrivals were indeed demigods — slowly approached waving plantain branches and making signs of submission. Members of the Tahitian aristocracy followed, including one white-bearded old chief crawling on hands and knees in abasement. Others offered gifts of pigs. Gradually more amicable relations were established, helped by the Tahitian women, encouraged by their menfolk, offering their favors to the sailors. George Robertson wrote, "All the sailors swore that they never saw handsomer made women in their lives and declared they would all to a man live on two thirds allowance rather than lose so fine an opportunity of getting a girl apiece ... We passed this night very merry supposing all hostilities were now over and to our great joy it so happened."

Wallis and his men were successful in bartering for fresh food and water, offering the islanders in return knives, hatchets, and iron nails. The only iron the islanders had seen before was from a ship wrecked without survivors on a reef off a distant outer island. Such was the islanders' passion for anything iron that Wallis's men were soon extracting nails surreptitiously from the Dolphin's hull to reward sexual favors. So great was their commander's concern that their depredations would irrevocably weaken his ship, they risked flogging if caught.

When they arrived, many of the sailors had been sick with scurvy, their gums black and bleeding, their teeth loose, their nails cracked, their urine green, their joints aching and stiff, and purple oozing ulcers covering their limbs. Others, including Wallis and several of his officers, had serious stomach disorders. Now with fresh food and the warmth of the island all began to recover. One of the island's noblewomen, named Purea, befriended Wallis, ordering him to be given food and carried by her servants to her home, a large thatched dwelling one hundred and twenty feet long and supported on fourteen carved pillars. In its shade she put four young women to gently massaging his limbs and those of other suffering officers. When in the process the ship's surgeon removed his wig, the surprise of the Tahitians was immense.

Later Purea would dine aboard the Dolphin — unlike Tahitian women of lower status, custom permitted her to eat with men. During her visit Robertson described her as "a strong well-made woman about five foot ten inches high ... very cheerful and merry all the time she was on board." On a later visit she asked Robertson to strip so that she could examine his body and, when he did, was surprised by his pale skin and "my breast being full of hair." She probed and felt the muscles of his thighs and arms as if testing his strength. "This seemed to please her greatly and she eyed me all round and began to be very merry and cheerful and, if I am not mistaken by Her Majesty's behaviour afterwards, this is the way the ladies here try the men before they admit them to be their lovers."

After five weeks, Wallis prepared to sail home. Despite the initial violent deaths, relations between his crew and the islanders had become so close that many on both sides were in tears. Aboard the departing Dolphin were many ceremonial gifts, including a plaited string of her hair Purea had presented to Wallis as a symbol binding him to her and a string of pearls she had given him for the British queen. As Purea watched the final preparations for leaving, Robertson recalled, "This great friendly woman took no manner of notice of what she got from us but shaked hands with all that she could come near. She wept and cried, in my opinion with as much tenderness and affection as any wife or mother could do, at the parting with their husband or children." Despite her grief she took care to stash away safely a red pennant from the Dolphin given to her by Wallis. She intended to have it sewn on to a sacred banner made of bark and banyan and flown with great ceremony on her clan's marae — a sacred meeting and worship place consisting of a raised stone platform — as a symbol of the earthly power she hoped to obtain through Wallis for herself and her clan when he returned, as he promised he would.

When the Dolphin reached England in May 1768, Wallis learned that Philip Carteret, commanding HMS Swallow, which had originally been part of his own expedition but had become separated from the Dolphin, had also returned having discovered, among other places, Pitcairn Island (some 1,200 nautical miles southeast of Tahiti), which he named after one of his midshipmen. Wallis quickly submitted to the Admiralty his meticulous charts and in his report eulogized the beauty of Britain's lush, fertile new possession and suggested further exploration of the region. Yet the accounts of Tahiti's beautiful and sexually available women published in the newspapers and in pamphlets — despite the Admiralty's attempts to keep Britain's discovery secret — most caught the public imagination. In one a sailor described how "the [Tahitian] men brought down their women and recommended them to us with great eagerness which made me imagine they want a breed of Englishmen amongst them."

Interest in Tahiti grew further as the reports of a French expedition filtered through to Britain. While Wallis had been homeward-bound, Louis-Antoine de Bougainville — navigator, diplomat, and mathematician — had also reached Tahiti. In tribute to Tahiti's "celestial women" he named the island New Cythera after the island near where the goddess Venus (Aphrodite) reputedly sprang from the sea, and he in turn claimed it for France.

His two ships, the Boudeuse and the Etoile, arrived early in April 1768. The Tahitians had quickly realized both the futility of opposing the occupants of "floating islands" with force and that the attractions of their beautiful women were one of the best ways to please and placate them and secure the iron goods they wanted. De Bougainville wrote that as his ships approached the shore the number of canoes shooting through the surf and thronging around the vessels made navigation difficult. The canoes' noisy occupants were

crying out "taio" which means friend and gave a thousand signs of friendship; they all asked nails and earrings of us. The canoes were full of women who for agreeable features are not inferior to most European women and who in point of beauty of the body ... vie with them all. Most of these fair females were naked ... The men ... pressed us to choose a woman and to come on shore with her; and their gestures which were by no means ambiguous denoted how we should form an acquaintance with her. It was very difficult amidst such a sight to keep at work four hundred young French sailors who had seen no women for six months. In spite of all our precautions, a young girl got on board and stood on the quarterdeck near a hatchway open to give air to those heaving the capstan below it. The girl carelessly dropped a cloth which covered her and appeared to the eyes of all beholders such as Venus showed herself to the Phrygian shepherd having indeed the celestial form of that goddess ... The capstan was never heaved with more alacrity than then.

De Bougainville's cook, who had slipped ashore against his orders, returned "more dead than alive." As soon as his feet touched the beach, the Tahitians seized and undressed him so that "he thought he was utterly lost, not knowing where the [actions] of those who were tumultuously examining every part of his body" would end. However, they soon returned his clothes and his possessions and beckoned a girl to him, "desiring him to content those desires which had brought him ashore. All their persuasive arguments had no effect; they were obliged to bring the poor cook on board who told me that I might reprimand him as much as I pleased but that I could never frighten him so much as he had just now been frightened on shore."

Even though he described the Etoile as a "hellish den where hatred, insubordination, bad faith, brigandage, cruelty and all kinds of disorders reign," the botanist Philibert Commerson had less reason to feel a lack of female companionship than any other man aboard de Bougainville's ships. He had smuggled on to the Etoile his mistress and housekeeper disguised as his valet, Jean Baret. By dint of restraining her breasts and pushing cloth down the front of her breeches she had not been detected during the long voyage to Tahiti. However, some of the islanders quickly grew suspicious and surprising her on the beach collecting shells with Commerson stripped her, as they had done the cook, and revealed her sex much to their amusement. Recovering from her ordeal, "Jean Baret" would continue the voyage, becoming the first woman known to have circumnavigated the globe.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Paradise in Chains"
by .
Copyright © 2017 Diana Preston.
Excerpted by permission of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.
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