Tahiti, the island paradise

by Nicholas Senn

In one of the far-off isles of the South Seas, in the garden-spot of the Pacific, in golden Tahiti, about the year 1848, when Victoria was a young queen and mother, when France was in the throes of a second revolution, when the United States, a young republic, was still on trial before the old world, there was enacted one of the most touching dramas history has ever recorded, and this among a people considered savages by the so-called civilized world, and almost unknown until discovered through the missionary fervor of a few priests. The place, a small island, only a speck on the map; the dramatis personæ, France, England and America, the hereditary chiefs of a people who for forty generations had known no other rulers, a weak, vacillating native queen, and a noble-hearted native woman who knew how to be at the same time a loyal subject, a skilled diplomat, and that rarer and more beautiful thing, a faithful friend. If you would hear a story of friendship pure and undefiled, listen to the story of Ariitaimai of Papara, a Tahitian of noble birth, a child of Nature in its wildest and grandest aspect, rocked in a gigantic cradle of sea, sky and towering mountains, in a land of palm forests, where Nature has provided everything necessary to the life of her children, and where the pearls are the purest. If Cicero had known the story of Ariitaimai he would not have written in De Amicitia: "But where will you find one who will not prefer to friendship, public honors and power, one who will prefer the advancement of his friend in public office to his own? For human nature is too weak to despise power." But to understand this thrilling and eventful drama, we must listen first to the chorus reciting something of the history of this strange people, and of the position of woman in a land where suffrage societies are unknown, and where the story of the inequality of the sexes had never been told by book or priest. Tahiti, Matea and Moorea are known as the Windward Islands of the Society Group in the South Seas. The Leeward Islands comprise the four kingdoms, Huahine, Borabora, Raiatea and Tahaa, together with some smaller islands, and are about one hundred and twenty miles from Tahiti. But it has always been in Tahiti, the gem of the Pacific, that the interest has been centered, and it was here that the struggle took place between the English and the French for supremacy in the South Seas.

[1]	This chapter is the product of the fertile pen of Dr. Lucy Waite. Surgeon-in-Chief of the Mary Thompson Hospital, Chicago.

It was in 1769 that Captain Cook entered Matavai Bay on his first voyage to observe the transit of Venus. This spot is marked by a stone monument and has been known ever since as Point Venus. At this time Cook estimated the number of inhabitants at two hundred thousand. To-day, after the long contention between the French and English for supremacy, after the brave struggle of the natives against both for independence, after all the ravages made by the diseases introduced by foreigners, and after years of a fearful mortality caused by the enervating effect of civilization upon a people suited only to be children of Nature, this goodly number has been reduced to a pitiful eleven thousand. In fact, our so-called nineteenth century civilization has succeeded in practically exterminating a people who could produce a pearl among womankind, a rare and tender soul, such an one as English history does not give us, and France has produced but one, her own Jeanne D'Arc.

The government of the island has always been by chiefs and chiefesses, no distinction of sex being made in laws of inheritance, the eldest born inheriting the rank and estates and all the authority which the title of chief conveys. Many of the chiefesses appear to have been exceedingly warlike, true Amazons, contending with neighboring chiefs for more authority and extensive possessions. Even as wives of the chiefs, women went to war to help fight the battles of their husbands and clans. It is reported of one of the Pomares who was of a peaceful disposition that in one hotly contested encounter he fled to a neighboring island, leaving his wife Iddeah to face the storm. History says that she was a great warrior and carried the contest to a successful issue for her husband and their possessions. It is recorded of another chief that he was not a warrior and left the active campaigning to his wife. So it will be seen that in the political life of Tahiti sex was not considered. Accident of birth settled the title, and the warlike spirit miade the warrior, whether it resided in chief or chiefess. England took a hand in the island politics at a time when one of the weakest and most unpopular chiefs was warring for the supremacy, and by assisting and upholding his authority prolonged one of the most disastrous wars in the history of Tahiti. The Tahitians detested tyranny and the insolence of a single ruler, and in their tribal system of chiefs had a protection against despotism which the foreigners, by their advocacy of the cause of a special chief, afterwards Pomare I., destroyed.

Before the invasion of the English, the hereditary chief of each district held absolute sway in his own province. Questions of common interest were settled in the island councils by majority vote, and it was in these deliberations that the chiefs of Papara had for generations held the balance of political power. Politically, the change was disastrous. In olden times whenever a single chief became arrogant and threatened to destroy the rest, all the others united to overthrow him and thus re-established the political equilibrium.

Ariitaimai belonged to the Clan of Tevas, of the chiefery of Papara, and the family of Tati. She belonged to the clan which was ruled by Opuhara, the last of the heathen chiefs who went down in the conflict with Pomare II., who with the help of English guns was made absolute monarch of the island. This conflict between Opuhara and the English, because Pomare was only an instrument in their hands to accomplish the conquest of the island, is responsible for the bitter hatred of the genuine natives for the foreigners and the missionaries.

Opuhara was considered the greatest warrior and hero of the Tevas, and his death, the result of a stratagem on the part of Pomare and the English missionaries, is considered by his people a veritable assassination. He fell by a shot fired by a native missionary convert. Tati, one of the under-chiefs of Papara, had been persuaded by the English to approach Opuhara to negotiate with him for submission. But Opuhara turned on him with scorn. "Go, traitor," he said; "shame on you! you, whom I knew as my eldest brother, I know no more; and to-day I call this my spear, 'Ourihere,' brotherless. Beware of it, for if it meet you hereafter, it meets you as a foe. I, Opuhara, have stood as Arii in Mona Temaiti, bowing to no other Gods but those of my fathers. There I shall stand to the end; and never shall I bow to Pomara or to the Gods forced on us by the white-faced man." With Opuhara perished the last hope of the native patriots to preserve a government of chiefs. His dying words were all that was left to his clan of the glory and power of Papara. "My children, fight to the last! It is noon, and I, Opuhara, the ti of Mona Temaiti, am broken asunder!" He fell a martyr to his belief in the heathen gods, and in the ancient inherited rights of his people: a tribal government. His followers have always firmly believed that Opuhara would have won the contest had not the missionaries brought their guns along with their Bibles.

It was this belief that Ariitaimai inherited with the beautiful lands of Papara. She says in her memoirs: "I am told that Opuhara's spear, 'Brotherless Ourihere,' is now in the Museum of the Louvre. Even in those days there were among all his warriors only two who could wield it. If the missionaries have sometimes doubted whether the natives rightly understood the truths and blessings of Christianity, perhaps one reason may be that the Tevas remember how the missionaries fought for Pomare and killed Opuhara."

Marama, the mother of Ariitaimai, was a celebrated chiefess in her own right, the sole heir of Marama, the head chief of Moorea, the nearest island to Tahiti. She was a great heiress, and the last representative of the sacred families of these two islands. She was given in marriage, as a political compromise and at the special request of King Pomare, to Tati's son, the head chief of Tahiti. It was also agreed that all issue of the marriage should become the adopted children of Pomare, according to an ancient Tahitian custom. The family is a great institution in Tahiti and any one whose parents both by birth and adoption had been carried to the family Marae with offerings to the gods, enjoyed a rare social distinction. This Ariitaimai could claim, so from her birth she was looked upon by the islanders as an especially favored and much-to-be-treasured maiden. It may be that this great respect shown towards her by the entire people did much to mold her character. The Tahitian mother has little to say in regard to the training of her first-born, as this one is considered to belong to the family as a whole, and all questions of general interest are settled in family council. And so it was with Ariitaimai. She saw little of her mother, but was in constant touch with the family chiefs from whom, no doubt, she learned lessons in diplomacy, and from listening to their councils she acquired that rare good judgment which fitted her later to be the accepted advisor of her teachers. She mastered both the French and the English languages, and her memoirs show a wonderful knowledge of the literature of both countries, as well as a wide and comprehensive reading of classical authors. While Ariitaimai was growing to womanhood, the pride and special care of the chiefs of Papara, another maiden was receiving equal care and attention on a neighboring island. Aimata of Raiatea, the daughter of Pomare II., was only nine years old when her father died and she was given into the care of the head chief Uata, who was a good and learned man.