“They’re crazy about boxing,” said Overton. “That’s young Mapuhi who put that up and wrote that. We reprove them for such ungodly interests, but they are good Mormons, anyhow.”
I led the conversation to their own work in this group. They became enthusiastic. Sincere faces they had, simple and strong, of the pioneer type. They were sons of healthy peasantry, and products of plain living in the open. De Kalb had left a wife and child in Koosharem, and Overton a sweetheart in Logan, to take their part in spreading their gospel among these natives. They were voluntary missionaries, paying their own expenses for the two or three years they were to give to proselytizing, according to the rule of their church, they said. They were eager to return to their women and their farms, and their service was soon to be at an end. Each had spent a year or so in Papeete in the Mormon Mission House, learning the Paumotuan language and the routine of their duties, and now for a year and more they had journeyed from atoll to atoll where they had churches, preaching and making converts, they said. They talked with fervor of their success.
“The Lord has been mighty good to us,” said De Kalb, who was in his twenties. “We’ve got this island hog-tied. If it weren’t for the Josephites and some of those Catholic priests, we’d have every last one. Those Josephites are sorest, because they are deserters from Mormonism. Why are they? Why, their so-called prophet was Joseph. I forget his other name. Oh, no, he was not our martyr, Joseph Smith. They split off from the real church. They don’t amount to a hill of beans, but when the Mormons left these islands, because the French were hostyle, these Josephites sneaked in and got quite a hold by lying about us, before we got on to their game and came back here. They’re out for the stuff. The real name of our church here is, Te Etaretia a Jesu Metia e te feia mo’a i te Mau Mahana Hopea Nei.”
“Gosh, I’d like to get my hair cut and roached,” said Elder Overton. “It was fine, when I left Papeete. I just have to let it go,” and he stirred his golden shock with the air of a man who has abandoned comfort for an ideal.
“Do the Paumotuans cling to their heathen customs?” I asked.
Overton looked at the floor, but De Kalb, the older, spoke up.
“They will circumcise,” he said hesitatingly. “We try to stop it, but they say it is right; that it makes them a separate people. They often wait until thirteen years of age before prompted to perform the rite. The kids don’t appreciate it.”
“And tithes? Your church members give a tenth of their incomes?”
Again De Kalb replied:
“They should,” he said. “These Takaroans are just beginning to see the beauty of that divine law. It is hard to make them exact. Perhaps they give a twentieth. It’s cocoanuts, you know, and it’s hard to keep account.”