Pioneers in Australasia

by Harry Johnston

The Tahitians possessed no narcotic like opium, betel, or tobacco, and at first Cook thought that they knew no intoxicant. But he afterwards found that they were able to get drunk on the juice of a plant called ava ava (the well-known kava pepper vine, referred to on p. 64). But the vice of drunkenness was almost confined to the chiefs and the nobility, and was forbidden to the women.

Banks gives the following interesting description of how a Tahitian gentleman would eat a meal:—

"He sits down under the shade of a tree, or on the shady side of his house, and a large quantity of leaves, either of the bread-fruit or banana, are neatly spread before him upon the ground as a tablecloth. A basket is then set by him that contains his provision, which, if fish and flesh, is ready dressed and wrapped up in leaves, and two coconut shells, one full of salt water and the other of fresh. His attendants, who are not few, seat themselves round him, and when all is ready he begins washing his hands and his mouth thoroughly with the fresh water, and this he repeats almost continually throughout the whole meal; he then takes part of his provision out of the basket, which generally consists of a small fish or two, two or three bread-fruits, fourteen or fifteen ripe bananas, or six or seven 'apples'. He first takes half a bread-fruit, peels off the rind, and takes out the core with his nails; of this he puts as much into his mouth as it can hold, and while he chews it takes the fish out of the leaves and breaks one of them into the salt water, placing the other, and what remains of the bread-fruit, upon the leaves that have been spread before him. When this is done he takes up a small piece of the fish that has been broken into the salt water, with all the fingers of one hand, and sucks it into his mouth, so as to get with it as much of the salt water as possible: in the same manner he takes the rest by different morsels, and between them, at least very frequently, takes a small sup of the salt water, either out of the coconut shell or the palm of his hand: in the meantime one of his attendants has prepared a young coconut, by peeling off the outer rind with his teeth, an operation which to a European appears very surprising, but it depends so much upon sleight that many of us were able to do it before we left the island.... The master, when he chooses to drink, takes the coconut thus prepared and, boring a hole through the shell with his finger, or breaking it with a stone, he sucks out the liquor. When he has eaten his bread-fruit and fish he begins with his plantains, one of which makes but a mouthful, though it be as big as a black pudding; if instead of plantains he has 'apples', he never tastes them till they have been pared. To do this a shell is picked up from the ground, where they are always in plenty, and tossed to him by an attendant: he immediately begins to cut or scrape off the rind, but so awkwardly that great part of the fruit is wasted. If, instead of fish, he has flesh, he must have something like a knife to divide it; and for this purpose a piece of bamboo is tossed to him, of which he makes the necessary implement by splitting it transversely with his nail. While all this has been doing, some of his attendants have been employed in beating bread-fruit with a stone pestle upon a block of wood; by being beaten in this manner, and sprinkled from time to time with water, it is reduced to the consistence of a soft paste, and is then put into a vessel somewhat like a butcher's tray, and either made up alone or mixed with banana or mahi sauce, according to the taste of the master, by pouring water upon it by degrees and squeezing it often through the hand. Under this operation it acquires the consistence of a thick custard, and, a large coconut shell full of it being set before him, he sips it as we should do a jelly if we had no spoon to take it from the glass. The meal is then finished by again washing his hands and his mouth, after which the coconut shells are cleaned, and everything that is left is replaced in the basket."

The Tahitian dances were often of an elaborate character; but some of them of an immodest nature. The people were very fond of music, and had a great sense of rhythm. Their musical instruments were chiefly drums and flutes.

The Tahiti drum was made of a hollow block of wood, solid at one end and covered at the other with sharks' skin. This was beaten by the hand and not with a stick. The flutes upon which the people played had only two stops, and therefore could not sound more than four notes by half-tones. They were not applied to the mouth, but were blown into from one nostril whilst the other was stopped with the performer's thumb. Nevertheless, to the music of these instruments four people would sing in concert, keeping very good time. They also had an expedient for bringing flutes that were played together into unison by rolling a leaf over the end of the shortest, like a sliding tube, moved up or down till they were certain that the playing was in tune, a fact of which they judged with much nicety of ear. They were very fond of singing couplets, especially after dark, to amuse themselves before going to sleep. Their language was a melodious Polynesian dialect, but, being deficient in several consonants, the native rendering of the names of officers and men of the Endeavour was quaintly imperfect. Cook was called Toot. The sailing-master, Mr. Molineux, had a name which they did not attempt to pronounce, so in preference they called him Boba, from his Christian name, Bob (Robert). Gore was turned into Toarro; Solander became Torano; Banks, Tapane; and Petersgill, Petrodero.

The Tahitian houses of the better sort were usually built, on a raised clay platform, of bamboo poles and palm thatch or matting. The furniture inside was very simple—little else than mats on the floor. No pottery was required, coconut shells and calabashes taking its place. The houses, when necessary, were lit up at night-time by the kernels of an oily nut, which they stuck on a wooden skewer one over the other. These candles burnt a considerable time, and gave a very tolerable light.

These Polynesians of Tahiti, as elsewhere in Oceania, were still living in the "Stone Age" when Cook visited them, but they had already learnt the value of iron from the previous visits of Bougainville and Wallis, and were very keen to obtain iron from the crew of the Endeavour. Previous to their intercourse with Europeans, fish hooks were made of mother-of-pearl, or some other hard shell, filed into shape with pieces of coral, drilled with holes by sharp-pointed stones, fixed into the end of a piece of bamboo, which was then rotated between the hands. Coral rock made excellent files for this and other industries. Their axes and adzes were derived chiefly from basaltic volcanic stone. The skin of a sting-ray[74] with its rough tubercles, and used with coral sand, made a fricative for polishing or rubbing down stone surfaces. With their stone axes they were able to fell trees, and, what is more, to split the trunk into planks from 3 to 4 inches thick, the whole length and breadth of the tree, though some of these trees were 8 feet thick and 40 feet long. They would smooth planks very expeditiously with their adzes, and take off a thin shaving from a plank without missing a stroke.

Their small canoes for short excursions were flat-bottomed and with upright sides, but the pahi, used for long voyages, was bowed and with a sharp keel. The flat-bottomed boats, called ivaha, were sometimes united at a distance of about 3 feet by a strong pole of wood laid across them and lashed to the gunwales. On the fore part of these double canoes a stage or platform was raised, rather wider than the boat itself, and upon this stage would stand the fighting men, whose missile weapons were slings and spears. Below these stages sat the men who paddled the canoe, and who furnished reinforcements to replace those who were wounded. Some of the fighting canoes were 40 feet long, and their sterns might be as much as 18 feet above the surface of the water. The pahi, or long-distance boat, was sometimes as much as 60 feet long, but very narrow. If intended for warfare it would be fitted with a stage or platform, or for long-distance journeys contain a house. It was steadied with one outrigger projecting 6 to 10 feet, and might have one or even two masts carrying sails that were made of matting.

After discovering and exploring the rest of the Society Islands to the north-west of Tahiti, which is an outlying member of the group, Cook directed the course of the Endeavour southwards in search of land; but finding none, except the minute inhabited island of Oheteroa (where the people were lusty and well made and clothed in beautiful bark-cloths painted in stripes of different patterns and colours, and armed with wooden weapons, sometimes pointed with the sharp bone of the sting-ray), he turned his course more to the west, and after sailing from 15 August, 1769, to 6 October, land was sighted on the latter date and became the subject of much eager conversation, it being believed that at last they had found "the unknown Southern land" (Terra Australis Incognita).[75]

On Sunday, 8 October, 1769, the ship was at anchor in Poverty Bay, off the east coast of the North Island of New Zealand; and Captain Cook, accompanied by (Sir Joseph) Banks and Dr. Solander, and a party of marines, landed—the first amongst Europeans—on the shores of New Zealand. Their reception from the natives was not a friendly one. When they had got some distance from the boat, four men armed with long wooden lances rushed out of the woods and attempted to attack the seamen who were left in the boat. The coxswain of the small pinnace was obliged to fire in the air to scare them. This, however, did not deter the Maoris, who renewed their attack, and at last one of them was shot dead. At this the other three stood motionless, as if petrified with astonishment; but as soon as they recovered their senses they seized the body of their dead companion to drag it after them, but abandoned it at last in a panic flight. Cook and his party returned to the ship, and heard the natives on shore discussing in loud voices what had happened. The next morning Cook, accompanied by Banks, Solander, and the interpreter, Tupia, landed and advanced slowly and quietly towards a party of fifty natives who were seated on the ground, every man of whom at their approach produced either a long wooden pike or a small axe of green jade, about a foot long and thick enough to weigh 4 or 5 pounds. The interpreter, Tupia, called to them aloud in the language of Tahiti, but they only answered by flourishing their weapons. Then a musket was fired wide, so as to scare them whilst the party retreated. A body of marines was landed, and marched with a union jack carried before them to a little bank. The officers once more approached the Maoris, and it was with great pleasure they perceived that their Tahiti interpreter was actually understood when he spoke, he and the Maoris only speaking different dialects of the same language. (This was a very remarkable fact, that the Maoris could understand the speech of other Polynesian natives from 1000 to 2000 miles distant, for the two peoples must have been separated in time by about six or seven hundred years.)