Unwrapping Tongan Barkcloth: Encounters, Creativity and Female Agency 9781474283328, 9781474283335, 9781474283311

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UNWRAPPING TONGAN BARKCLOTH

UNWRAPPING TONGAN BARKCLOTH Encounters, Creativity and Female Agency

FANNY WONU VEYS

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

LON DON • OX F O R D • N E W YOR K • N E W DE L H I • SY DN EY

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square London WC1B 3DP UK

1385 Broadway New York NY 10018 USA

www.bloomsbury.com BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2017 © Fanny Wonu Veys, 2017 Fanny Wonu Veys has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: HB: 978-1-4742-8332-8 ePDF: 978-1-4742-8331-1 ePub: 978-1-4742-8330-4 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Cover design: Catherine Wood Cover image: © Fanny Wonu Veys, Tonga 2008 Typeset by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd

For my mother and grandmother

CONTENTS

List of Figures  x List of Plates  xiii List of Maps  xvii List of Tables  xviii Acknowledgments  xix

Introduction  1 Pathways 2 Blurry edges 5 Structure of the book 7

PART ONE  ENCOUNTERS 11 1 Awakening European minds 13 European impressions 14 The quest for barkcloth names 19 The ancestry of barkcloth 23

2 Creating barkcloth  29 The story of a tree 30 The substance of color 40 Rubbing boards 43 Sticky stuff 44 Supersizing it 45 Working together 49

3 Collecting barkcloth  53 Enticing cloth 54 Barkcloth appropriations—the Alexander Shaw books 57 The “Spanish Lake” 62

CONTENTS

viii

Lost collections? 64 Decreasing interest 68 Beachcombers, merchants, and whalers 68 Missionaries 72 Collecting souvenirs 76

PART TWO  CREATIVITY  79 4 Creativity in shapes and forms  81 Tongan-style barkcloth 81 Barkcloth design through time 82 Barkcloth circulation 100 Imagining and forging the Tongan land 105

5 Between the cross and the cloth  109 Before missionary arrival 110 Missionary failure and uncertainties, 1797–1827 112 Triumphant Christianity, 1828–1860 116 “Civilizing mission,” gender, industriousness, and economic policies 119 Creating beautiful and moral bodies 122 Missionary attitudes and an east–west divide 127 Wesleyan and Marist competition 128 Barkcloth—a way of being in the world 131

PART THREE  FEMALE AGENCY  133 6 Capturing the “female essence”?  135 Enveloped by ngatu 135 Defining koloa 138 The value of koloa 141 Are koloa gendered? 145

7 A feast for the senses  151 A modern dynasty of royals 151 Royal ceremonies—a wedding, two funerals, and a coronation 154 Characteristics of barkcloth 160 Conflated sensations 166

CONTENTS

Conclusion—encounters, creativity, and female agency  169 Encounters—surprising and vital concurrences 169 Creativity—ingenious imagination 170 Female agency—prestigious mediation 171

Appendix 172 Glossary  190 Bibliography  194 Index  218

ix

LIST OF FIGURES

1.1 Armed encounter between a Dutch boat and a Tongan tongiaki in 1616. Unknown artist (Schouten 1648). Leiden University Library, [M k 62] 15 1.2 Clothing of Tongans in ‘Eua. Drawn by Isaac Gilsemans, c. 1643. Nationaal Archief, Den Haag, Aanwinsten Eerste Afdeling, nummer toegang 1.11.01.01, inventarisnummer 121, scan 101 18 1.3 Clothing of Tongans in Nomuka. Drawn by Isaac Gilsemans, c. 1643. Nationaal Archief, Den Haag, Aanwinsten Eerste Afdeling, nummer toegang 1.11.01.01, inventarisnummer 121, scan 94 19 2.1 Paper mulberry plantation in Foa. Ha‘apai, March 7, 2003 31 2.2 Cut paper mulberry trees sold at Sailoame market in Neiafu. Vava‘u, February 2003 34 2.3 Three women seated outdoors on the ground beating strips of bark. One of the women is wearing a white barkcloth wraparound skirt 39 2.4 “Fatafegui” wearing barkcloth decorated with a grid of lines forming lozenges in which large dark dots and crescents are enclosed. Drawn by Juan Ravenet, 33.5 × 21.5 cm. España. Ministerio de Defensa. Archivo del Museo Naval carp I (38). Fatafegui 48 3.1 A sample of Tongan barkcloth from a Shaw book 59 3.2 Decorated barkcloth worn by a man displaying his tattooed thigh (Dumont d’Urville 1833: planche 76) 67

LIST OF FIGURES

xi

4.1 “Taufa, mujer de Vuna.” Taufa, the wife of Vuna is wearing a dark striped barkcloth. Drawn by Juan Ravenet (Sotos Serrano 1982: 243, fig. 769) 85 4.2 Three pieces of ngatu tāhina, collected by Johann Reinhold and George Forster. Deposited in 1982 by Peter Rheinberger. The diagram shows how the three pieces fit together. 1774.540.14.1, 1774.540.14.2, 1774.540.16 86 4.3 Stylized representation of ngatu tāhina (left) and ngatu ‘uli (right) 87 4.4 Overview of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Tongan barkcloth motifs indicating their continuation into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Unshaded: motif is not mentioned in texts, nor does it occur on studied barkcloths; Light gray: motif is mentioned in texts, but not found on studied barkcloths; Dark gray: motif is not necessarily mentioned in texts but occurs on studied barkcloths 89 4.5 Different steps in assembling a ngatu fuatanga 91 4.6 Barkcloth with two-dimensional naturalistic designs collected during a voyage of Captain Cook. 214bis, Museum of Natural History in Florence 98 4.7 Ratu Apenisa Seru Cakobau, Vunivalu of Bau, c. 1874–5 wearing Tongan-style barkcloth. P.103564. VH 104 5.1 “Indios de Vavao,” Indians of Vava‘u. This image shows three Tongans dressed up in decorated barkcloth and fine mats. Drawn by Juan Ravenet, 21.8 × 18.5 cm (Sotos Serrano 1982: 250, fig. 787) 111 5.2 “Intérieur d’un temple,” Interior of a temple. Wesleyan missionary preaching inside a church as witnessed by Dumont d’Urville’s crew. Etching by Le Breton, lithograph by Bayot (Dumont d’Urville 1842: pl 76) 123 5.3 Portrait of a woman wearing a pandanus fruit necklace, a cotton top, and a barkcloth skirt depicting bats as in Plate 19. Gelatin silver print possibly made by the British photographer and naturalist Joseph Jackson Lister around 1880, 15.8 × 11.4 cm, Oc,B130.164, AN549938001 125

xii

LIST OF FIGURES

5.4 A Tongan family is wearing Victorian-style dress with its accoutrements: the man wears a double-breasted suit and tie and holds a walking stick, the woman, a patterned cotton Mother Hubbard dress, and the children shirts and trousers. Platinum print possibly made by the British photographer and naturalist Joseph Jackson Lister around 1880, 10.7 × 15 cm, Oc,B51.11, AN501519 126

LIST OF PLATES

1

Women stretching pepa (Vilene) over the barkcloth-making bench (papa koka‘anga). Houma, Tongatapu, March 21, 2003

2

Four steps in processing the bark: (upper left) making a cut at the bottom of the tree; (upper right) separating the bark at the bottom of the tree; (bottom left) ripping the bark from the stem; (bottom right) separating inner from outer bark with a knife. Pahu, Nuku‘alofa, Tonga, March 2003

3 Beating tutu at Niutoua. Note that two women, mother and daughter, are beating together. Tongatapu, February 2003 4

Barkcloth from the Cook/Forster Collection in Göttingen

5 Making koka dye: (upper left) putting koka scrapings in the fautaukoka; (upper right) tying the fautaukoka; (bottom left) slinging the fautaukoka over metal bars; (bottom right) squeezing out the koka juice. Tongatapu, April 2003 6

Pipiena is making a kupesi with a fata ‘o Tu‘i Tonga motif. Langafonua ‘a e Fefine Tonga, Nuku‘alofa, Tongatapu, April 2003

7

Several stages in the koka‘anga process: (upper left) fixing kupesi to a rounded bench. Kolomotu‘a, Tongatapu, March 14, 2003; (upper right) rubbing dye to obtain a fishnet pattern. Tofoa, Tongatapu, February 22, 2003; (bottom left) rolling up the barkcloth to move it to one side of the bench. Tofoa, Tongatapu, February 22, 2003; (bottom right) spreading a lau nima barkcloth to let it dry. Kolomotu‘a, Tongatapu, February 29, 2003

8

Tohi or painting in Ma‘ufanga. Tongatapu, April 2003

xiv

LIST OF PLATES

9

Decorated barkcloth collected between April 20 and May 21, 1827, by Pierre-Adolphe Lesson, medical doctor and botanist aboard the Astrolabe, during the voyage of Dumont d’Urville. 290 × 180 cm. E-22-157, Collection des musées municipaux, Ville de Rochefort

10

Ngatu ‘uli, collected and donated in 1791 by John Webber. 1791.516.1, 288 × 236 cm

11

Decorated barkcloth, collected by Johann Reinhold and George Forster, donated by Johann Reinhold Forster in 1776. 90 × 300 cm, 1886.1.1225

12

Possible Cook Voyage barkcloth held in the William Hunter collection before 1813, E668, 83 × 204 cm

13

Ngatu ‘uli from the Cook/Forster Collection in Göttingen. Inv. Oz 631, Humphrey No. 35, 62 × 124 cm

14

Ngatu tāhina with a black fo‘i hea dot from an Alexander Shaw book. Oc1903,–147.a–c, EOC10617

15

Page from an Alexander Shaw book with a tatautuisipa design. Oc1903,–147.a–c, EOC124634

16

Complete eighteenth-century barkcloth collected in Vava‘u in 1793 during the voyage of Malaspina. 70479, 2956 × 328 cm

17

Barkcloth decorated with elongated triangles and long rectangles, purchased from Carl W. Lüders in 1885. 279 × 230 cm, Coll.no.RV-489-87

18

Gatu vakaviti, decorated with Tongan-style rubbing and Fijian stenciling, collected in Fiji during the United States Exploring Expedition (1838–1842). (E4401) Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution

19

“The catching of the flying foxes” depicted on a barkcloth which was collected in 1890, in Hihifo by J.J. Lister who visited Tonga aboard the HMS Egeria. Acquired in 1902, 156 × 372 cm, 1902.335

20

Barkcloth with a Ha‘amonga design and KOEVAISIMA printing. Collected on the 1899 voyage of the US Fish Commission on the Albatross. Gift of Prof. Alexander Emanuel Agassiz

LIST OF PLATES

xv

21

Women lining the barkcloth pathway in front of the Wesleyan Centenary Church. Nuku‘alofa, Tongatapu, June 10, 2003

22

During the coronation of George Tupou V, a barkcloth pathway was extended from the Palace to the Free Wesleyan Centenary Church. Nuku‘alofa, Tongatapu, August 2008

23 A tivaevae designed by Mrs. Munokoa Purea and made by Mrs. Helen Ake Mateariki, occupied a central position during the golden jubilee of the fiftieth priesthood anniversary of Bishop Stuart O’Connel S.M.D.D. held at St. Joseph Catholic School. St. Joseph Road, Tutakimoa, Avarua, Cook Islands, August 2010 24

The celebrations of the Holy week leading to Easter Sunday in the Catholic village of Lapaha involved the wrapping of the twelve Stations of the Cross in barkcloth and mats. Tongatapu, April 6, 2012

25

Folding a dark barkcloth (ngatu ‘uli) decorated with motifs inspired from historical museum barkcloths to incorporate in the wedding bed (mōhenga mali). Sia ko Veiongo, Kolomotu‘a, Tongatapu, June 3, 2003

26

‘Eiki Salote Lupepau‘u Salamasina Purea Vahine Arii ‘o e Hau Tuita and Matai‘ulua-‘i-Fonuamotu Fusitu‘a sitting on the wedding bed (mōhenga mali) which forms a throne showing their elevated status. The skin of the bride is glistening with Tongan coconut oil. Mala‘e Pangai Lahi, Nuku‘alofa, Tongatapu, June 11, 2003

27

Koloa si‘i including crocheted bedspreads (kafu niti), sweets panels (tapu lole) and baskets with sweets (kato lole) presented at the marquee on the palace grounds. Nuku‘alofa, Tongatapu, September 20, 2006

28

Queen Sālote College schoolgirls and their teachers are lining a barkcloth pathway on the mala‘e kula, the royal burial grounds during the state funeral of Tupou V. Mala‘e Kula, Nuku‘alofa, Tongatapu, March 27, 2012

29

As a sign of appreciation, a large barkcloth is brought to the dancers participating in the coronation celebrations of Tupou V. Pangai Lahi, Nuku‘alofa, Tongatapu, August 2008

xvi

LIST OF PLATES

30

Mats and barkcloths gifted to Queen mother Mata‘aho showing the accumulation of her relationships. The textile wealth is guarded by Brenda Manu (left) and Faneno‘o Holan (right). Royal Palace grounds, Nuku‘alofa, Tongatapu, March 2012

31

Family members of the royal couple proceed slowly to the marquee where they are going to disencumber themselves of their koloa wrappings. Royal Palace grounds, Nuku‘alofa, Tongatapu, June 6, 2003

32

Women from the bride’s side piling up their mats, barkcloths and cotton fabric during the fakalēlea (checking for elopement). Fongoloa, Nuku‘alofa, Tongatapu, June 6, 2003

LIST OF MAPS

1 The Tongan archipelago xxii 2 Western Polynesia xxiii 3 The main island of Tongatapu with indication of major villages and districts xxiv

LIST OF TABLES

A.1 Visitors to Tonga from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries 173 A.2 Distribution of the Alexander Shaw books and Shaw books sold at auction 186

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Koloa ‘a Tonga ko e fakamālō The treasure of Tonga is in saying thank you ‘OKUSITINO MĀHINA (2004B: 106)

Writing a book is an adventure. What statement could be more appropriate in a publication about Tongan treasures than the above epigraph (Māhina 2004b: 106) to thank the people who have traveled shorter or longer distances of the path with me? I am very grateful to Steven Hooper for guiding me during my research and sharing his enthusiasm and passion for all things Polynesian. He was the first to make me discover barkcloth, putting a great deal of trust in me and supporting me in all my projects and ventures. My gratitude also goes out to Laura Van Broekhoven and Wayne Modest at the National Museum of World Cultures in the Netherlands who made the writing of this book possible by giving me time, supporting me administratively and intellectually. I was fortunate to work on parts of this book as a research fellow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and at the Musée du quai Branly in Paris where I was guided by Eric Kjellgren and Philippe Peltier, respectively. Many people have contributed to this project. My warmest thanks go out to the staff and curators of various UK universities and museums: Francine Hunt, Patricia Hewitt, Lisa Harris, Angela Thomas, Sue Giles, Jill Hasell, Jenny Newell, Natasha McKinney, Lissant Bolton, Susan Bennett, Leslie Jessop, Julia Edge, Hassan Arero, Lawrence Keppie, Sally-Ann Coupar, David Jones, Sharon Sanders, Hew Prendergast, Maire Noonan, Giles Guthrie, George Bankes, Mark Hall, Zena McGreevy, Len Pole, Chantal Knowles, Amiria Salmond, Rolf Zeegers, Anita Herle, Tabitha Cadbury, Nicholas Thomas, Joshua Bell, and Jeremy Coote. In France the following people helped me with my fieldwork, museum, and archival research: Françoise Douaire-Marsaudon, Paul van der Grijp, MarieClaire Bataille, Jacqueline Jacqué, Philippe Peltier, Claude Stéfani, Yves Le Fur, David Verhulst, Serge Tcherkézoff, Simonne Pauwels, Christine Athénor, Claire Brizon, and Hélène Guiot. Un grand merci! Roger Neich—who is immensely missed—Fuli Pereira, Roger Fyfe, Moira White, Tarisi Vunidilo, and Sean Mallon assisted me during my museum visits

xx

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

in New Zealand. Antje Sonntag, Jude Philp, Yvonne Carillio, and Kirk Huffman did the same in Australia. In Switzerland, Susanne Jost guided me through their barkcloth collection. Thank you to Christian Kaufmann for his enthusiasm and passion. Several people including Felicia Pickering, Adrienne Kaeppler, Karen Kramer, Meredith Vasta, Eric Kjellgren, Betty Kam, Kamalu Dupreez, and Marquez Marzan assisted me during my museum visits in the United States. In the Netherlands a whole team led by Dirk Smidt welcomed me. Anna Lisa Runarsdottir and Michael Poltorak were very helpful in advising for my fieldwork. Mahe ‘Uli‘uli Sandhurst Tupouniua, secretary to the High Commissioner in London in 2003, encouraged and helped me with my first Tongan words and phrases. A special thank you goes out to all the Tongan people who made me feel welcome and shared parts of their lives with me. Sela and ‘Atolo Tu‘inukuafe welcomed me in their guesthouse and let me enjoy their Tongan food. Kālisi Matoto Fine processed my research permit quickly. Diana, a teacher at Queen Sālote College, helped me with my Tongan and was very indulgent with my mistakes. I was also welcomed into her family. Poli Faleafā invited me to her house for Tongan “talking sessions.” Sister Senolita and Pāmata Fa‘asolo introduced me to the Catholic youth group and allowed me to take part in the Friday play rehearsals with the guitar Sister Senolita lent me for the duration of my stay. Siosiua H. Fonua provided me with a permit to attend the Royal wedding. To my friend Lavinia Malupo who often gave me fresh pastries from the bakery where she was working: thank you very much! I am very grateful to Vaka Pole‘o for teaching me Tongan songs and for the music we played. Hon. Albert Tu‘ivanuavou Vaea always made time to answer my questions and has shown a genuine interest in my work throughout the years. A big thank you also goes out to Lady Tuna Fielakepa, who sitting at the back of the Langa Fonua handicraft shop provided me with invaluable information on barkcloth. We had very pleasant talks everywhere we met, be it Tonga or Tahiti. Futa Helu, who sadly has passed away and was head of the ‘Atenisi University, and his family welcomed me warmly into their house and gave me advice on libraries to consult in Tonga. I want to thank the following families for their generosity: Sese and family, Lufina and Taani Pohahau and their children, Silivia and Tufui Va‘ilea, Haini and Vaisioa Tonga and their son Fatafehi, and Temalisi Maile and family. I am very grateful to the crew of the Tongan broadcasting studio for their help. A special thank you goes out to the journalist Linny Folauhola with whom I spent many hours at royal events. I want to thank Malia Talakai for assisting me in transcribing parts of my fieldnotes and for a friendship, which has now lasted for more than ten years. Henele Ma‘afu went into great lengths checking transcriptions. My gratitude goes out to the staff of the Tonga Traditions Committee and the Palace Office for all the hours we spent together preparing royal ceremonies. A special thanks goes out in particular to ‘Ami Latu, Mele‘ofa Sāteki, Mele‘ana Niu, Mapaheu Fusitu‘a, Ailine

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

xxi

Blake, Katokakala, and Maopa. To Fīnau, Kaveinga Fotu, Tapuaki Ha‘unga, Jeff Hausia, Losa Kakau, Arvind Deo Kumar, ‘Anau Paletu‘a, Saia Ve‘ehala Hafoka, Sim, Iengi Tapu, Kaloni, Tupou Taufa, Kea Taukolo, Vunivalu Tongia, ‘Oholei Tu‘i, Sela Na‘a Latu, Viliami Lolohea, Tupou Pasikala, and Monalisa Palu: Mālō ‘aupito! I have appreciated the stimulating talks that spur thinking with ‘Okusitino Māhina. A special thank you goes out to Lucy Moala-Mafi for her care and generosity and to Filipe Tohi for our interesting conversations about art. I am immensely grateful to Tanya Edwards who has been checking the content of all Tuna Fielakepa’s quotes with her. I also want to thank all the Tongans whose names I do not know, but who showed interest in me through their Mālō e lelei! (Hello!), Fēfē hake? (How are you?), and ‘Alu ki fē? (Where are you going?). My friends in many different countries shared their stories with me and made me feel surrounded even though we were often hundreds or even thousands of kilometers apart. I want to thank my friends and colleagues for stimulating conversations and interesting collaboration projects, in particular Svenja Völkel, Carine Durand, Karen Jacobs, Ludovic Coupaye, Maia Nuku, Andy Mills, Haidy Geismar, Katharina Haslwanter, and Billie Lythberg. A special thanks goes out to Paul, who has been my knipselkrant (newspaper cuttings) keeper, always updating me on the latest news from Tonga and the Pacific in general. I am very grateful to my family in Belgium. Especially to my grandmother Marie-Thérèse, who awaited my stories with great and genuine interest and who learned to use the computer to keep in touch with me. I received her first e-mail while on fieldwork in Tonga in 2003. My warmest thanks go out of course to my mum Françoise who has always supported me with her never-ending enthusiasm, being there at the other end of the phone and traveling to come and see me whenever she could. This book is dedicated to these two women.

TONGA ENLARGEMENT

Fonualei Toku

VAVA'U GROUP Vava'u

Nuapapu Hunga Late

Koloa Pangaimotu Kapa

Ovaka

N

Ofolanga Mo'unga'one

Kao Tofua

Fotuha'a

Lofanga Ha'afeva

Kotu Tungua

HA'APAI GROUP

Nomuka

Telekivava'u Lalona

Mango Tonumea Kelefesia

Hunga Tonga Hunga Ha'apai

Ha'ano Nukunamo Foa Lifuka Uoleva 'Uiha

Telekitonga

Atata 'Euaki Tongatapu

TONGATAPU GROUP

'Eua

Scale 0 0

25 25

50 50

Map 1  The Tongan archipelago. © Mark Gunning, 2016.

75

Miles 100

Kilometers

100

150

200

100

FIJI

200 Miles 300 Kilometers

Vanua Levu

Group

Lau

Futuna

Map 2  Western Polynesia. © Mark Gunning, 2016.

0

Scale 0 50

Viti Levu

N

WESTERN POLYNESIA

Tongatapu

Niuafo'ou

'Uvea Upolu

Ha'apai Group

TONGA

Vaua'u

Niuatoputapu

Savai'i Tutuila

SAMOA

NIUE

Manu'a Islands

5

5

10

Miles

15 Kilometers

10

Nakolo

Ha'asini Hamula

Lavengatonga

Fua'amotu

Toloa

Pelehake

Fātumu

Map 3  The main island of Tongatapu with indication of major villages and districts. © Mark Gunning, 2016.

0

0

Scale

Kala'au

Manuka Sopu Masilamea Nāvutonga Te'ekiu Kolonga Puke Afa Hōfoa Nukunuku Fatai Talafo'ou Hā'utu Matahau Nuku'alofa Niutoua Lakepa Makaunga Fanga Halaleva Fahefa Haveluloto HIHIFO Popua Nukuleka HAHAKE Kahoaua Vaotu'u Hoi Liahona Pea Folaha Houma Nukuhetulu Talasiu Tokomololo Longoteme Ha'ateiho Lapaha Ha'alalo Lotoha'apai Alaki Mu'a Veitongo 'Utulau Vaini VAHE LOTO Holonga Tatakamotonga Malapo Haveluliku

Kolovai Ha'avakatolo Fo'ui

Ha'akili

Ha'atafu Neiafu Kanokupolu

TONGATAPU

N

INTRODUCTION For a way-finder no knowledge, no image is stilled either in time or in space. GREG DENING (2004: 167)

Following the line of thought expressed in above extract, Unwrapping Tongan barkcloth attempts to explore both temporal and spatial aspects in its pursue for knowledge about barkcloth. The book explicates what living with barkcloth has involved historically, how it has given meaning to social relationships, and what its implications are today. It explores Tongan barkcloth as a material of encounter in which aspects of manufacture, decoration, and use are vehicles of female agency and nurture ways of being in the Kingdom of Tonga. Tongan barkcloth, made from the inner bark of the paper mulberry tree, still features lavishly in Polynesian ceremonies all over the world. Despite the attention paid to this textile in exhibitions, by anthropologists and art historians, very little is known about its history. The present book aims at uncovering stories that emerge when barkcloth is unwrapped as it is examined in museums or presented during ceremonies in Tonga. Using object, archival, written, pictorial, and photographic material, I reveal some of the earliest narratives around barkcloth, imbedded in the larger story of Polynesian and European encounters. Barkcloths were eagerly collected from the late eighteenth century onward and offer a uniquely unmediated insight into Tongan creativity. The book analyzes how the application and geographical spread of particular motifs is tied to the history of Tonga and its position within Western Polynesia. Documented evidence of use leads to considering the mechanisms through which Tongan barkcloth swayed from an item featuring in all aspects of life to a fabric almost exclusively acting in a ceremonial context. While religious, moral, and economic policies encroached on the domains in which barkcloth could circulate freely, the competition between Protestant and Catholic missionaries contributed to its survival and flourishing. Equally, barkcloth production and use is a way for women to nurture social relations and contribute to nation-building. I demonstrate that the female capacity for creating community is epitomized during royal ceremonies where all the senses are called upon to exemplify what makes the Kingdom of Tonga.

2

UNWRAPPING TONGAN BARKCLOTH

Pathways The path that has taken me to writing this book has been diverse disciplinarily and linguistically. The academic disciplines are European and non-Western art history, (European medieval) archaeology, and anthropology focusing on material culture. All of these disciplines have informed this book in methodological and/or theoretical ways, even though—especially in the case of the pair art history and anthropology—the disciplines are often perceived to be on tense footing with one another. As the anthropologist Howard Morphy (2007) claims, influenced by Eurocentric mind-sets, there exists the impression among scholars that there are objects or art that are part of art history, and things that are not. Borrowed from art history, a methodology involving a formal analysis of Tongan barkcloths in museum collections in Europe, New Zealand, Australia, and the United States was used. Data about Tongan barkcloths were collected. For each piece a worksheet detailed elements such as measurements, decoration technique, designs, layout, border design, and motifs, most of which was captured in digital images. Other elements including place of collection and of manufacture, collector, and museum acquisition date were also included. Because the museum documentation is so limited, mentioning no collection date, one often has to rely on the museum acquisition date to determine the barkcloth’s age. Data about the collector can prove useful in order to know about the collecting circumstances and/or place. Museum information was complemented with historical textual, pictorial, and photographic documents. These elements out of the classical toolbox of the art historian (D’Alleva 2005) partly enable to answer questions such as how were the barkcloths created, what is the trajectory of the design elements, and for whom were the barkcloths created? The method also allows to trace historical developments in one particular object category—in this case barkcloth. Outlining changes through time is often missing when art history methods are applied to objects, which are traditionally studied in the anthropology of art. The focus so far has been restricted to, for example, tracing style areas and individuality in Yoruba sculptures (Fagg 1965); identifying a carver’s personal evolution in Asmat art (Gerbrands 1967); uncovering aesthetic principles in Tikopia art (Firth 1973); exploring the art and the structure of society in the Pacific, Asia, and the Americas (Lévi-Strauss 1963); or more recently discussing the role of Yolgnu art in the creation and transmission of social meaning (Morphy 1991, 2007). The section looking at the ancestry of barkcloth has heavily relied on the work of archaeologists such as Patrick Vinton Kirch (2000), who in his research about Pacific islands ecosystems closely collaborates with ecologists, soil scientists, paleobotanists, and quantitative modelers, and Andrea Seelenfreund and her team (Moncada et al. 2013; Seelenfreund et al. 2010, 2011), who exploit the

INTRODUCTION

3

possibilities of contemporary plant DNA analysis and use it in conjunction with classic archaeological excavations. The barkcloth study inscribes itself both theoretically and methodologically in anthropology. From the late 1980s onward, a growing number of scholars, mainly anthropologists (Appadurai 1986; Buchli 2002; Henare, Holbraad, and Wastell 2007; Küchler 2002; Miller 1987, 2005a), have recognized that objects are interrelated to persons in dynamic processes. Recent object-focused research has demonstrated that artifacts are central to the constitution of society, to the negotiation of cross-cultural encounters, to innovation, and to oral history. For Oceania specifically, on a theoretical level, important groundwork has been carried out by Thomas (1991), Gell (1993, 1995), Küchler (2002), and Bell and Geismar (2009). Other scholars have been dealing with particular indigenous genres and historic collections, such as objects assembled during Cook’s late eighteenth-century voyages (Kaeppler 1978a, 2011), art from New Ireland (Peltier and Gunn 2006), a century (1760–1860) of object production, use and collection in Polynesia (Hooper 2006, 2007), New Zealand Māori collections (Starzecka, Neich, and Pendergrast 2011), and contemporary responses toward historic Melanesian objects (Bolton et al. 2013). The “material turn” in the social sciences contrasts with prevailing attitudes toward objects in the decades preceding the 1980s. While ethnographic collections as objectifications of authoritative knowledge (Thomas 1991: 141– 143) were pivotal to nineteenth-century material culture studies, they gradually lost their appeal in favor of the ethnographic monograph based on field work and participant observation. One of the founders of modern cultural anthropology, the German-American Franz Boas, who had made of objects a primary source for understanding societies, became disillusioned with these same things in the first decade of the twentieth century, favoring fieldwork (Boas 1907). The anthropological method of fieldwork was also applied to this project. Fieldwork in Tonga started in 2003 and was reiterated in 2006, 2008, and 2012. The major part of the research was carried out in Tongatapu, staying with Sela, her husband, their children, and grandchildren with short stays in Ha‘apai and Vava‘u. The methods used to record information were observation, informal interviews, and participant observation. Those three elements were often mixed. The digital camera and a notebook were the main tools to record information although sound recording played its part too. Observation consists of gathering as much information as possible from one’s senses of which vision and sound might be considered the most important as far as barkcloth making and use of barkcloth are concerned. Even though Western epistemology gives prevalence to seeing and hearing, ranking touch, smell, and taste as lower and not conducive to rational knowledge (Classen 1993), in relation to barkcloth, feeling and smelling things prove extremely relevant. A good example is a barkcloth making party in Pili, Tongatapu. A smell of petrol was hanging over the place. I later found

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out that the paste made to glue the pieces of barkcloth together was in fact flour, boiled in water but mixed with kerosene to keep the insects away from the finished barkcloth. Had I not mentioned the petrol smell, the women would not have told me they added kerosene to their “glue.” Although I carried out some interviews for which I prepared questions and to which the women were replying while not being in the action—making barkcloth or participating in a funeral or a wedding—most interviews took a more informal tone. In fact, they often took the shape of talanoa, a conversation carried out face-to-face without a rigid framework. Talanoa has been proposed as a research methodology particularly suited to the Pacific (Vaioleti 2006). I usually introduced myself as a researcher who is very interested in barkcloth making and use. The talanoa transitioned mostly to participant observation by which people got to know me, but it also allowed me to get acquainted with some of the women. I learned how to beat barkcloth and participated in the assembling process (koka‘anga). During funerals and weddings, I made presentations together with the relatives of the deceased. For the royal occasions I worked together with the Palace Office and the Tonga Traditions Committee in documenting all the events. While my working languages in the academic sphere so far had been Dutch, French, and English, to read all the relevant published and unpublished sources available, German, Spanish, and Italian have taken an important position as well. And of course Tongan was instrumental in the talanoa during fieldwork. When I had to choose a topic for a research paper that was part of the MA course at the Sainsbury Research Unit, University of East Anglia, I was immediately drawn to one of the proposed essays on “Barkcloth in Polynesia.” While my curiosity was triggered by my limited knowledge of the topic, I was perhaps even more drawn to the important female presence in all aspects pertaining to barkcloth. I grew up in an environment where knowledge and skills held by women are not only acknowledged and treasured but also passed on from generation to generation. That knowledge—baking lukken, biscuit-like hard Belgian waffles—has enabled my great-grandmother to buy a piece of land, live through the First World War and successfully raise a family of nine as she later developed her own fine patisserie section next to her husband’s bakery. When in the evening everyone gathered around the centrally located Leuven stove (Leuvense stoof, household furnace), my great-grandmother practiced her favorite craft, handed down to her by her paternal aunt: crocheting bedspreads. Beside the fact that all her children inherited a beautiful specimen, those bedspreads also consolidated numerous friendship and family relationships. The baking secrets and the handicraft techniques, from crocheting, to knitting, sewing, and embroidery were handed down to my great-grandmother’s three daughters of whom the youngest, my grandmother, applied herself to the skills with the most passion. Her favorite crafts are knitting and embroidery but she has also specialized in macramé, Tunisian crochet and art knitting, and exhibiting

INTRODUCTION

5

and selling unique pieces. However, her biggest love has been baking. As a fiveyear-old, she accompanied her mother on family visits during which mother and daughter always entered a fine patisserie where my grandmother was asked to taste and detect the ingredients. Gradually she learned the secrets of their proportions. Grandma made a living of her baking skills, teaching, creating new recipes for many companies, and publishing them in newspapers and magazines. Young and old still visit my ninety-year-old grandma for baking and knitting advice, encounters that have sparked marvelous culinary and original creations, which she is writing down in view of publication. My mother, who is a linguist, has received all the know-how of the previous generations and was honored with a precious gift: of the eight female grandchildren, she received her grandmother’s crocheting sample box with all the old and personal designs. She shares her grandmother’s favorite craft of crocheting. She designs, makes, and sells wonderful, colored sofa spreads, amigurumi figures as well as some clothing items for all kinds of occasions, using them as gifts for relatives and friends. Despite personal preferences in each generation, the bulk of those original female crafts and skills, that are very much part of our family DNA, now have been handed down to me. My preference goes out to knitting, sewing (I design and make my own clothes), and of course, I love baking! Traveling with my camera in its crocheted case (very effective against tropical humidity) has facilitated encounters, leading to fascinating conversations. This female agency has been instrumental in keeping a family together in which each generation was born in culturally and linguistically different parts of the world, be it Flanders, Wallonia, Congo, or Nigeria and in which each generation adapted its know-how to the fashion and needs of the moment. These aspects in which female creative knowledge mediates encounters and links people together today and across generations are all discernable in the story of Tongan barkcloth.

Blurry edges Setting the spatial framework of this book is an exercise in precision and flexibility. It forces to think about spatial boundaries and how they have changed through time. It will become clear that when looking at barkcloth, the borders of what constitutes contemporary Tonga have always been permeable. The Western notions of Polynesia and Western Polynesia are central to comprehending this geographical space with blurry edges. Today Tonga comprises 169 islands with a total land area of 697 km2 which lie scattered in the south-west Pacific between 15° and 22° south latitude and 173° and 175° west longitude, 300 km east of Fiji (Map 1). There are three distinct archipelagos: Vava‘u in the north, Ha‘apai in the center, and Tongatapu in the south. The two remotest islands to the northwest of Vava‘u are Niuatoputapu

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(Sacred Niua, 270 km from Vava‘u) and Niuafo‘ou (New Niua, 340 km from Vava‘u). The historian Elizabeth Wood-Ellem (1999: 2) suggests that Tonga’s population might have been as large as 50,000 in the 1700s but had decreased to 20,000 by 1900. Estimates of the present population indicate a little more than 103,000 of which two thirds live in the capital Nuku‘alofa (Statistics Department 2011). The word tonga means “south.” In indigenous perception Tonga is interpreted as the land to the south. In Western categorization Tonga is considered part of the geographical and cultural area of Polynesia that, as Tcherkézoff (2003a, 2011) explains, was a European invention. It slowly developed from 1595 with the Spanish explorer Pedro Fernandez de Quiros into a generally accepted notion around the 1840s. Captain Cook, during whose voyages the first Tongan barkcloth was collected, was struck by the similarities perceived among peoples he encountered on such widely separate islands as New Zealand, Rapa Nui, Tahiti, Tonga, and Hawai‘i. Especially the linguistic parallels struck him when during his first voyage (1768–1771) he took on board Tupaia, a priest and navigator from Ra‘iatea (Society Islands) who served as translator in New Zealand. The fact that this Tahitian man could communicate with New Zealand Māori made Cook realize that the languages were related (Salmond 2003: 116). In his second voyage, off Rapanui, Cook reflected in March 1774 that “it is extraordinary that the same Nation should have spread themselves over all the isles in this Vast Ocean from New Zealand to this Island which is almost a fourth part of the circumference of the Globe” (Cook 1969: 354). As others before him, Dumont d’Urville had noticed striking physical differences between peoples in the South Seas (Tcherkézoff 2003a: 176; Thomas 1997b: 133). In 1832 he refers to “two distinct races” in his Sur les îles du Grand Océan. The first “race” was defined as having average height, a yellowish, coppery complexion, straight hair, and well-proportioned bodies, while the second “race” had very dark-brown, “sooty” complexion, curly or frizzy hair, with a “badly” proportioned body and “ugly” facial features. This binary racial division was then laid onto the regional division into four parts including Malaysia,1 Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia.2 The “brown people” were present in Polynesia, Micronesia, and Malaysia, and the “black people” in Melanesia. The boundary between Polynesia and Melanesia was drawn between Tonga and Fiji (Dumont d’Urville 1832a: 1–21, 2003: 163–174). Dumont d’Urville had actually been inspired by the work of Charles de Brosses, who had proposed the term

The word Melayu is thought to derive from the Tamil words Malai and ur meaning “mountain” and “city, land,” respectively. Dumont d’Urville invented the word Malaysia in analogy to Polynesia, Micronesia, and Melanesia (Weightman 2011: 449). 2 Polynesia is a compound word derived from the Greek πολυ (many) and νησος (island), Melanesia from μελας (black) and νησος, and Micronesia from μικρος (small) and νησος. 1

INTRODUCTION

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Polynesia in 1756 to encompass all of the islands to the west of New Holland (Australia) (Tcherkézoff 2003c: 278). Despite Polynesia being a Western invention, the archaeologist Kirch (2000: 211) argues that the term has stood the test of time as a “meaningful unit for culture-historical analysis.” He continues: “Only in Polynesia do we find a robust grouping, one that is meaningful in terms of a set of peoples and cultures who share a common history. That is to say, all of the Polynesian cultures known ethnographically (and the languages spoken by them) have arguably derived from a common ancestral culture (and proto-language) over a period of about 2,500 years” (Kirch 2000: 211). Tonga can further be categorized as belonging to Western Polynesia (Map 2), a notion first developed by Burrows (1970) who drew on the concepts of “culture-area” and “culture-center” developed by American anthropologists using diffusionist principles. Burrows (1968: 179) defined them as “the process whereby useful or otherwise appealing human inventions are adopted by one community after another, so that their use spreads in all directions from where they were invented, as long as no physical or cultural barrier intervenes.” He stressed that culture-areas3 and culture-centers4 are not universal in space or time, but are local and temporary. Moreover Burrows (1968: 179) noticed a contradiction in the fact that “area” implies boundaries that will loose their clear-cut character by cultural diffusion itself. Burrows’s (1968: 182–189) division into Western and Eastern Polynesia was based on aspects of material culture, social structures, and religious beliefs. The idea of Western Polynesia became generally accepted (Duff 1969: 10). Kirch and Green assert that archaeology has confirmed this east–west division (Kirch 2000: 215; Kirch and Green 2001: 439). Steven Hooper and Karen Jacobs (Hooper 2006) reaffirmed the concept of Western Polynesia by organizing objects originating from Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, American Samoa, Niue, Wallis (‘Uvea), and Futuna under the heading of “Western Polynesia.” In doing so, they point at the extensive contact that was going on in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Structure of the book The structure of the book follows both a chronological—from the barkcloth’s first reference in European sources to contemporary practices at royal events—and a thematic line stressing encounters, creativity, and female agency. “A culture area … is a region which by this process [diffusion] has come to share so many cultural devices (“traits, elements”) that most cultures within it belong to a fairly definite common type” (Burrows 1968: 179). 4 “A culture-center is a smaller tract where, to judge by the distribution of cultural devices, invention has been so active as to give character to the culture-area all around” (Burrows 1968: 179). 3

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Chapter 1, “Awakening European minds,” is the first of three chapters looking at encounters with barkcloth. The chapter explores how a material such as barkcloth, which was unknown to Europeans, starts to occupy a place in their minds. To grapple with this Pacific textile, Europeans embark on a naming quest to subsequently try to untangle the archaeological ancestry of the cloth. Chapter 2, “Creating barkcloth,” discusses the creation or birth of barkcloth as a first step in the social biography of the object. It acknowledges the fact that most of the historical knowledge produced about Tongan material culture is filtered through the eyes of Europeans, fashioned by ideas they were surrounded with, at the time of writing. The types of plants used and the origin of the dye are considered, as are the decorating techniques. To conclude, the division of labor in the production process is reviewed. Chapter 3, “Collecting barkcloth,” explores the collection of barkcloth in Tonga, which has resulted in a corpus that now forms an epistemological basis for examining creativity in barkcloth types and motifs. The earliest pieces of Tongan barkcloth were collected during Captain James Cook’s second voyage in 1773. From 1796 onward, visitors to Tonga not only include explorers, but also beachcombers, merchants, whalers, missionaries, colonial officials from neighboring areas, and tourists. This chapter examines the ideas on collecting and collecting practices of these newcomers. The role of Tongans in this process is similarly looked at. Partially remediating the biased European gaze dealt with in the previous chapter, Chapter 4, “Creativity in shapes and forms,” accepts the premise that barkcloths themselves offer a unique unmediated insight into Tongan creativity. In this chapter, I tease out through the personal encounters with Tongan-style barkcloth how its motifs and shapes indicate Tongan relations with its neighbors and with historical events. By documenting religious, moral, and economic policy encroachments on the domains in which textile could operate freely, Chapter 5, “Between the cross and the cloth,” demonstrates how Tongan barkcloth swayed from an item featuring in all aspects of life to a fabric almost exclusively acting in a ceremonial context. I argue that from the 1820s onward, Methodist and Catholic missionaries have been primordial in introducing European fabric, while at the same time contributing both consciously and unconsciously to the perpetuation of barkcloth production and use. The last two chapters study female agency in relation to barkcloth. The presentation of large amounts of goods and food during ceremonial occasions in Tonga has been discussed extensively in anthropological literature. Based on nineteenth-century observations and twentieth-century scholarship a broad distinction is generally asserted between objects made by men and those made by women. In Chapter 6, “Capturing the ‘female essence’?”, I explore how barkcloth as an object made by women (koloa) has been defined historically and

INTRODUCTION

9

in contemporary Tonga. I then engage in the debate of how and why barkcloth is valued to finally question the notion of gendered objects which views barkcloth exclusively as women’s wealth. In Chapter 7, “A feast for the senses,” I demonstrate, using case studies centering around royal life cycle rituals, how the female capacity for creating community is epitomized during royal ceremonies. This section maintains that the way vision, audition, tactility, and olfaction are conveyed through barkcloth, corresponds to Tongan sensibilities which contribute to giving shape to what it means to be Tongan in the Kingdom. The concluding chapter recapitulates some of the major themes in the book. It addresses the materiality of barkcloth by engaging both with the characteristics of the material and the dialectic relationship of Tongans and barkcloth through the lens of encounters, creativity, and female agency. I thus conclude that Tongans have not simply made or used and are still making and using barkcloth, but have been and still are shaped by this textile.

PART ONE

ENCOUNTERS

1 AWAKENING EUROPEAN MINDS A 200-year past is beyond experience and memory, … And beyond the radar of our various electronic recording systems. There are no voices from two hundred years ago, no smells, no touches, no movement. GREG DENING (2004: 21)

As Dening (2004: 21) expressed in the above extract, present-day researchers of the past cannot rely on films, sound recordings, or memories emanating from personal encounters. However, when the first European voyagers to Tonga arrived in the seventeenth century, they produced—albeit limited—written and pictorial records. Furthermore, to all appearances no Tongan barkcloths1 have survived from those expeditions. As no firsthand Tongan accounts exist, the epistemological problem emerges of relying on scarce documents to appreciate different aspects of barkcloth. What did barkcloth look like? How was it produced? How was it used? Only scant responses can be provided to these questions. Historical sources portray barkcloth both as an element of clothing and as an exchange item. However, until 1773, when the second voyage of Captain James Cook contributed to the initial collection of Tongan barkcloth, it is difficult to conceptualize physical aspects of barkcloth for lack of tangible proof. This chapter explores how through writing, drawing, and naming, Europeans gradually acquainted themselves with a material, which up to the eighteenth century had been unknown to them. To conclude, I will demonstrate how minds are still fascinated by barkcloth, attempting to uncover and study its genealogy using archaeological, linguistic, and historical means.

According to Jan van der Waals (1992: 162) there are several objects, including an axe, adzes, and jewelry in the National museum in Copenhague that were collected by Jacob Le Maire. The objects belonged to the collection of the English medical doctor Woodward. While van der Waals states Price (1989) as the source of his assumptions, I could not find any reference in Price (1989) to the Jacob Le Maire collection.

1

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European impressions In 1616 the Dutchmen Jacob Le Maire and Willem Corneliszoon Schouten were the first Westerners to visit Tonga. They left Texel (the Netherlands) in 1615 with two ships, the Eendracht and the Hoorn, and voyaged westward from Holland to accomplish the first rounding of Cape Horn. Their trip was the brainchild of Isaac Le Maire, Jacob’s father, who to that end had set up the Austraalsche Compagnie (Australian Company).2 Having lost the Hoorn to a fire off the Patagonian coast, only the Eendracht crossed the Pacific reaching the Tongan islands of Niuatoputapu, Tafahi, and Niuafo‘ou, which were respectively named Traitor’s Island (Verraders Eylandt), Coconut Island (Cocos Eylandt), and Hope Island (De Goede Hoop). Subsequently the Horne Islands (Hoornsche eilanden) of Futuna and Alofi were sighted. The voyage continued to New Ireland and New Guinea to end in Batavia, contemporary Jakarta. Jacob Le Maire (1945 [1622]: 51) recorded on May 8, 1616, that the people of Niuatoputapu were dressed in barkcloth, covering only the lower parts of their bodies: “We found some coconuts, yam roots,3 mats and clothes of bark with which they covered their intimate parts.”4 In his journal, Willem Janszoon Schouten (1945 [1618]: 179–180) described a dress that might be a skirt or a loincloth, but is less explicit about the material of which the clothing is made. He nevertheless comments on the color: “They had some clothes, that they put in front of their intimate parts and which also covered them against the heat of the sun and which were of a funny colour.”5 This meeting with Tongans in a tongiaki, a Tongan double hull canoe, north of Niuatoputapu and Tafahi was drawn by an unknown artist and first published in 1619 in Schouten’s account. It is the earliest depiction of Tongans by Europeans (Figure 1.1). Brian Purdue (2002), who conducted a study comparing three versions of that image published between 1619 and 1770, reveals the deceptive

The Austraalsche Compagnie was also an attempt to thwart the influence of the Dutch East India Company (VOC). 3 The original text uses the word “Obes” which stands for Ubi. The VOC (Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie) glossary quotes: “UBI (II/T1/T2). Plant of the dioscorea family; the roots were used as food and medicine. Javanese; Malaysian uwi or wi. T1: yam. T2: Malaysian ubis yam [also ubas, ubaswortel].” Translated from Dutch by the author: “UBI (II/T1/T2). Plant van de familie der dioscorea waarvan de wortelknollen gebruikt werden als voedsel en als medicijn. Javaans; Maleis uwi of wi. T1: yam, broodwortel. T2: Maleis ubis yam [ook ubas, ubaswortel].” (Kooijmans and SchooneveldOosterling 2000: 199). 4 Translated from seventeenth-century Dutch by the author: Bevonden by haer eenige Cocos-Noten, Obes-Wortelen, Matjens, en Cleederen van Bast, daer zy de schaemte mede deckten (Le Maire 1945 [1622]: 51). 5 Translated from seventeenth-century Dutch by the author: “Sy hadden sekere kleetjens, die zy voor haer schamelheydt deden, ende heur mede bedeckten teghen de hette der Sonne, van drollighe coleur” (Schouten 1945 [1618]: 179). 2

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Figure 1.1  Armed encounter between a Dutch boat and a Tongan tongiaki in 1616. Unknown artist (Schouten 1648). Leiden University Library, [M k 62].

transformations to which the drawing has been subjected. For example, the record of the armed encounter disappears in favor of a representation leaving the impression of Tongans being “untouched, within their own world,” unaffected by the Europeans’ sailing past. This shows how documentary value can be lost as illustrative and inventive aspects take over (Purdue 2002: 113). However, all three versions reveal completely naked Tongans which is in stark contrast to the fully clothed Europeans on the small boat. Moreover, the nakedness in the drawing contradicts the accounts of both Schouten and Le Maire. The voyages of the Dutch should be seen in the light of the Dutch United East India Company (Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie, VOC), set up in 1602 and as of the 1670s permanently located in Batavia. The Dutch protected the private trading interest of the Company by securing the exertion of sole right to grant licenses in the region, thus creating a kind of early corporate monopoly. The Company’s exclusive control extended throughout the Pacific with the exception of the Spanish Philippines. After the establishment of the VOC no Dutchman was authorized to trade privately within that region. The first European exploring voyages sighting Tonga were actually commercial voyages hoping to circumvent the legal restrictions by approaching Asia from the Pacific (Campbell 2003: 53; Fischer 2002: 86–87). Because Jacob Le Maire and Willem Corneliszoon Schouten were not Company men, they never got the recognition they deserved

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for their valuable additions to European geographical knowledge. On their arrival in Batavia, both explorers were arrested and their goods confiscated by the Governor-General Jan Pietersz Coen. Schouten died on their forced journey back (Hooker 2004: 21). Batavia’s Dutch Governor-General Van Diemen, the Company’s resident administrator, sent Abel Tasman to explore the unknown southern and eastern seas: two ships, the Heemskerck and the Zeehaen, sailed from Batavia on August 14, 1642. Tasman sailed south of Australia to be the first European to visit Van Diemen’s Land (later renamed Tasmania) and New Zealand, named after the Dutch province of Zeeland. In 1643, he voyaged to Tonga’s southernmost islands ‘Ata (Pylstaart), Tongatapu (Amsterdam), ‘Eua (Middelburgh), going north to Hunga Ha‘apai, Hunga Tonga, Kelefesia, Tonumea, Nomuka (Rotterdam), and the Nomuka Group, the Kotu group, Tofua, Kao, and Late.6 He was the first European to sight Fiji; he sailed to New Guinea before returning to Batavia. But as Abel Tasman brought neither riches nor trading goods, the dissatisfied Company reproved him (Fischer 2002: 87). Tasman talks about barkcloth on the occasion of his landing in Middelburgh on January 21, 1643: around noon a small canoe with three men from the land came close to our board, its men were naked, of a brown colour and a bit more than average in height, two had long thick hair on the head, the third was shorn short [they] had nothing else than a small insignificant cloth in front of their manhood, … there is a canoe with 4 people [,] stout men, having the body painted in black from the middle to the thighs, their necks hung with big leaves [have] come aboard bringing a white flag and a cloth of bark from trees … and [the men of] the canoes were made to come aboard bringing a gift from the King, consisting of a nice big pig, some coconuts and yams [,] the bringer was the one who brought us the white flag and the barkcloth. (Tasman 1919: 58–60)7 In Isack Gilsemans’s drawings Nomuka is called “Anamocka,” Nomukeiki is called “Namocaki,” Mangoiki is not marked and Mango is referred to as “Amango.” The two small islets “southeast” were Kelefesia and Tonumea, the “large high island” was Tofua, an active volcano that reaches to a height of about 505 meters which is named “Amatafoa” in Gilsemans’s sketch. The “round and much higher island” was Kao, an island which rises in a perfect cone and is named “Kaybaij” by Gilsemans (Hooker 2004: 23–24). 7 Translated from seventeenth-century Dutch by the author: “… omtrent den middach isser een cleijn praeutien met drije man van landt dicht aen ons boort gecomen, Zij lieden waren naeckt, van bruijne Coluer ende wat meer als gemeene langhte, de twee hadden lanck dijck hair op ‘t hooft, den derden was cort geschoren hadden niet anders als een cleijn olijck cleetien voor haer mannelijckheijt, … daer is een praeutien met 4 persoonen cloecke mannen, zijnde ‘t lijchaem vande midden tot de dien Zwart geschildert, hunne halzen behangen met Groote bladeren aen boort gecomen, brengende een widt vlaggeken ende een cleet van bast van boomen, … ende sijn ditto praeuwen doen aen boort geschept meede brengende een schenckagie van de Coninck, bestaende in een moij groot varcken, partije clappus ende oubis wortelen den brenger was die geene die ons het wit vlaggeken ende het basten cleetien bracht, …” (Tasman 1919: 58–60). 6

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Tasman continued his report in the morning of January 22 as follows: “… at our board appeared [people] of which 18 stout men and some women came aboard, bringing some cloths of bark and fruit such as coconuts [,] yams and other roots, …” (Tasman 1919: 61).8 The Dutch explorer omitted mentioning visual or textural aspects of ngatu but he did discuss, be it briefly, several of its uses. To the earlier record of barkcloth as clothing given by Le Maire and Schouten, Tasman adds that ngatu formed a substantial part of the presentations. Hereby the “gift of food” was separated from the “gift of barkcloth,” thus marking the differences between koloa (prestigious objects), essentially a female production and ngāue (feasts), resulting from male labor (Chapter 6). Did the men or the women take the lead in making the presentations during this encounter? Drawing parallels with contemporary Tongan presentations, I assume that women presented barkcloth and men gifted food. Abel Tasman also revealed the nature of the Tongans’ tattoos extending from the middle to the thighs. He clearly stated that the four men were acting on behalf of the king. The presence of tattoos suggests that the king was probably absent as he was usually not tattooed because his high rank did not permit him to be touched by a Tongan. To undergo the operation the king had to go to Samoa (Mariner 1827: vol. 2, 197; Mallon 2005: 149).9 The expedition’s merchant, cartographer, illustrator, editor, and explorer, Isack, Isaac or Issac Gilsemans (ca. 1606–1646) made four drawings of Tasman’s encounter with Tongans. The small number of articles discussing these drawings focus on the depicted canoes such as tongiaki, similar to those encountered by Le Maire and Schouten as well as on outrigger canoes (vaka) of the tafa‘anga type (paddling outrigger canoe) (Hooker 2004: 20–24, Purdue 2002; Salmond 2006: 251–252; St Cartmail 1997: 111–112). Gilsemans’s vessels indicate that for the Dutch the image of a canoe was “a picture of competing technologies” (Purdue 2002: 105). The double-hull canoe was encountered at Tasman’s anchorage at “Van Diemens Reede” (Van Diemen’s Roadstead), north of Tongatapu, and the outrigger canoe at “Vanderlins Reede” (Vanderlins Roadstead), near Nomuka. In stark contrast to Schouten’s image, the Tongans on Gilsemans’s drawings, both in the canoes and ashore are not naked but clothed with plant fiber skirts or sisi, which nowadays are usually made from hibiscus fiber. In one drawing three people are shown standing (Figure 1.2). One of the men is wearing a shell necklace and holding a folded textile. Is it barkcloth? A fine mat? Another

Translated from seventeenth-century Dutch by the author: “…, bij ons boort verscheenen waer uijt 18 cloucke mannen ende eenige vrouwpersoonen aen ons boort quamen, brachten, eenige cleetiens van bast, ende ffruit [sic] als clappus oubis ende andere wortelen, …” (Tasman 1919: 61). 9 Stating the young beachcomber Mariner (1827: vol. 2, 197) about tattooing: “Tooitonga [Tu‘i Tonga, King of Tonga] is never tattowed [tattooed] at the Tonga Islands, for it is not considered respectful to put so high a chief to so much pain, and if, therefore, he wishes to undergo this operation, he must visit Hamoa [Ha‘amoa, Samoa], (the Navigator’s Islands), for that purpose.” 8

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Figure 1.2  Clothing of Tongans in ‘Eua. Drawn by Isaac Gilsemans, c. 1643. Nationaal Archief, Den Haag, Aanwinsten Eerste Afdeling, nummer toegang 1.11.01.01, inventarisnummer 121, scan 101.

drawing, depicting four people, shows no barkcloth but tattooing10 on the chest and upper arm of one of the men, leaves around the neck of the sitting men, and women wearing seed and shell necklaces (Figure 1.3). In the background, some of the men are wearing barkcloth loincloths. The British succeeded the Dutch in the exploration of the Pacific. They realized that discovering Terra Australis, the unknown southern continent, would give Great Britain strategic advantages over Spain and France. In 1767 the Admiralty sent Philip Carteret and Samuel Wallis (1728–1795) in two vessels to discover Terra Australis. Both ships lost sight of each other near the Strait of Magellan. Samuel Wallis traveled to the Tuamotus and “annexed” Tahiti in the name of King George III, voyaged on to Niuatoputapu in the Tongan archipelago, then “discovered” in 1767 ‘Uvea which was named Wallis after him by later explorers. He continued to the Marshall Islands, the Marianas, Batavia, and Java (Fischer 2002: 88–89). Barkcloth is possibly mentioned in the context of neighboring ‘Uvea where he writes on August 16, 1767: “They appeared to be a robust, active people, and were quite naked, except a kind of mat that was wrapped round their middle” (Hawkesworth 1773: vol. 1, 275).

This is the earliest visual source for Tongan tattooing.

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Figure 1.3  Clothing of Tongans in Nomuka. Drawn by Isaac Gilsemans, c. 1643. Nationaal Archief, Den Haag, Aanwinsten Eerste Afdeling, nummer toegang 1.11.01.01, inventarisnummer 121, scan 94.

The quest for barkcloth names What’s in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE (IN ROMEO AND JULIET II, II, 1-2)

Along with European barkcloth encounters started the search to designate a material thus far unknown and therefore unnamed. Polynesian words gradually made their entry after the initial employment of words in European vernacular languages. As discussed earlier, the eighteenth-century Dutchman Jacob Le Maire (1945 [1622]: 51) refers in 1616 to barkcloth as “Cleederen van bast” (clothes of bark) and so does Abel Tasman (1919: 58–60) in 1643 with his “basten cleetien” (barkcloth). By the eighteenth century, English, French, and Spanish became the predominant languages in which barkcloth is described. For the Spaniard Francisco Antonio Mourelle (also Maurelle) de la Rua aboard the frigate La Princesa, the barkcloth he sees on the volcanic island of Late in Tonga on February 27, 1781 reminds him of “blotting paper” (Maurelle 1798: 369). The ship-of-the-line lieutenant Ciriaco Cevallos and the reporter Francisco de Viana joined the Spanish voyage with the Descubierta and the Atrevida led by Alejandro Malaspina. The two established a Tongan vocabulary list, the former to be published with Malaspina’s writings, the latter for a personal publication.

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Both translate “natu” [ngatu] by “tela de árbol” (tree fabric) (Cevallos 1885: 623; de Viana 1958: 224). Eighteenth-century English accounts by Europeans never refer to Tongan barkcloth in the vernacular language, but instead prefer to call it “(their) cloth,” “Indian cloth” or “paper-cloth.” George Forster (1999: vol. 1, 230), the natural historian accompanying Cook on his second voyage described how Tongans from ‘Eua presented material “for sale” in October 1773: “We were presently surrounded by a number of canoes, each containing three or four people, who offered great quantities of their cloth for sale” [author’s italic]. David Samwell (1967: 1033), the surgeon’s second mate on Cook’s third voyage, mentioned how, during a night in Tonga in 1777, other shipmates and himself “all laid together in one room upon Matts & were covered with a large Quantity of Indian Cloth” [author’s italic]. It is only from the nineteenth century onward that local names appear along with variations on the word “cloth.” William Mariner (1827: vol. 1, 142), who was adopted by Tongans after most of the crew of the Port-au-Prince had been killed in 1806, consistently used the Tongan word ngatu for barkcloth: “They were led into the house on the malái [mala‘e], and seated on bales also of the finest gnatoo [ngatu].” In his description of the manufacture of barkcloth in Tonga in the early 1800s he wrote “When gnatoo is not printed or stained, it is called tapa” (Mariner 1827: vol. 2, 206). The French explorer Jules Dumont d’Urville’s (1832b: 269) explanation in 1827 of the differences between ngatu and tapa duplicates almost exactly Mariner’s account: “Gnatou [ngatu] that neither is painted nor printed, is called tapa.”11 John Elphinstone Erskine (1853: 135), who cruised on HMS Havannah in 1849, elaborated on the distinction between ngatu and tapa: “When this cloth is not printed or stained, it is called ‘tapa’ or ‘taba’, by which name it is generally known among all the islands of the Pacific; and when completely finished and coloured, which is done partly by a beautifully constructed stamp, and partly by painting it by hand, it is termed here ‘gnatu.’” As early as 1823, the poet and writer Lord Byron12 interweaves both the words ngatu and “tapa” in the verses of his poem The Island, or Christian and his Comrades: “Around our waists the Tappa’s white displayed” (Byron 1823: Canto the second, 2); “A pine torch, strongly girded with gnatoo” (Byron 1823: Canto the fourth, 7), and “The mat for rest; for dress the fresh gnatoo” (Byron 1823: Canto the fourth, 8). While Byron’s poem The Island could be mocked for mixing data coming from two different places in the Pacific—Tubuai and Tonga—he

Author’s translation from French: ‘Le gnatou qui n’est ni peint, ni imprimé, se nomme tapa (Dumont d’Urville 1832b: 269). 12 The use of the words tapa and ngatu shows that Byron carefully read Bligh’s and Mariner’s accounts, which he also acknowledges on the first page of his poem: “The foundation of the following Story will be found partly in the account of the Mutiny of the Bounty in the South Seas (in 1789) and partly in ‘Mariner’s Account of the Tonga Islands’” (Byron 1823: 6). 11

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seems to have well understood the difference between ngatu and tapa. His single use of the word “tapa” is accompanied by the word white to distinguish it from the colored and decorated ngatu. The word ngatu is found in a number of Western Polynesian languages where it bears similar meanings. The linguist Churchward’s (1959: 386) definition for ngatu is: “tapa-cloth: made by Tongan women from the bark of the hiapo.” In Fijian, gatu is probably a loanword from Tongan and refers to the Tongan-style barkcloth (see Chapter 4, section titled “Tongan-style barkcloth”). The Samoan language defines it as an old siapo (barkcloth), used as a wrapper, or as rags in sickness. In Tuamotu (East Polynesia), ngatu means “worn out” (of clothes). Other possible cognates are found in Eastern Polynesian languages such as those spoken in Tahiti and Rapa Nui (Easter Island). There it means a kind of pandanus or other plant such as bulrush used in plaiting (Paul Geraghty, personal communication, July 2001). The word "tapa" has been incorporated into the English language and is now used worldwide as a synonym for barkcloth. The Oxford English Dictionary Online (2015) gives the following definition for “tapa, also tappa”: “A kind of unwoven cloth made by the indigenous people of Polynesia from the bark of the Paper Mulberry (Broussonetia papyrifera).” Other European languages also use tapa to refer to barkcloth. An Italian publication on barkcloth has the simple title of Tapa Tapa (Anati 1997) and explains in the introduction that tapa is a synonym for barkcloth (Anati 1997: 5). The German anthropologist Paul Hambruch (1926: 15) states: “Tapa has now become a general name for these cloths, whether they come from the South Seas, Indonesia, Africa or America.”13 There is debate about the origin of the term tapa and its use in European languages. Tamahori (1963: 14) claims the word was used by eighteenth-century European travelers and suggests that tapa is used in Tahiti and Hawai‘i. However, the word tapa was not part of the vocabulary of the eighteenth-century explorers and was only consistently utilized from the second decade of the nineteenth century onward when talking about any kind of barkcloth. Second, ahu and kapa are the vernacular words for barkcloth in respectively Tahiti and Hawai‘i. The Oxford English Dictionary Online (2002) quotes Lord Byron’s 1823 poem The Island (in Canto the second, II) as the earliest example where tapa is used.14 William Cary, survivor of the ship Oeno that was wrecked in 1825 on Turtle Island, now known as Vatoa (Fiji), described how each of the inhabitants was “carrying a bundle of tappah cloth” (Cary [n.d.]: 27). Tapa was repeatedly used as a replacement word for barkcloth in Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, and ‘Uvea by Charles

Author’s translation from German: “Tapa ist heute Allgemeinbenennung für diese Stoffe geworden, ob sie nun aus der Südsee, Indonesien, Afrika oder Amerika stammen” (Hambruch 1926: 15). 14 “In summer garments be our limb array’d; Around our waists the Tappa’s white display’d” (Oxford English Dictionary 2002). 13

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Wilkes when leading America’s first scientific Exploring Expedition (1838–1842). He hardly ever mentioned the vernacular words and when he did, he “translated” those by using the term tapa. This is clear in a fragment about Fiji where Wilkes (1845: vol. 3, 83) described how the snake spirit Degei15 was believed to have been seen by some people: “Thus, he is reported to have appeared under the form of a man, dressed in masi (white tapa), after the fashion of the natives, on the beach, near Ragi-ragi.” The term “tapa” most probably originates from the early nineteenth-century European contact with Polynesia, deriving from the Tongan and Samoan tapa, meaning the uncolored border of a barkcloth sheet and the Hawaiian kapa, a variety of barkcloth (Kooijman 1972: 3–4; Neich and Pendergrast 1997: 9–10). Brigham (1911: 1) believes the etymology of kapa is simply “ka = the, and pa = beaten or beaten thing.” Hambruch (1926: 15) agrees with Brigham but also proposes that kapa might be related to the Samoan word tapa, which he assumes comes from the Malay word tapi, meaning border. He continues that tapa has developed into having several meanings in the Pacific,16 for example, indicating a piece of cloth in Tahiti and barkcloth in Mangareva. The anthropologist Tamahori (1963: 13) believes that in Polynesia the word tapa has its origin in an Asiatic homeland. This rests on Ling and Ling (1963: 29) who say that in ancient Chinese literary works the words t’a-pu, ta-pu, tu-pu, na-pu, ka-pu, or ku-pu were used for barkcloth. The Pacific linguist Albert Schütz thinks the English word tapa is derived from Marquesan and Tahitian (Cargill 1977: 35). So does the Italian archaeologist Emmanuel Anati (1997: 7), stating that “tapa” is the Tahitian word for barkcloth. It is clear that there is much debate as to the exact origin of the word “tapa” and how it became part of European languages. In this book “barkcloth” will be used when discussing it in a general, supraregional way as Polynesian languages do not have any word in common that means “barkcloth.” When talking about the barkcloth tradition of a specific region, the local name or barkcloth will be utilized. To avoid any confusion, “tapa” or even “tapa cloth” will not be used as a synonym for barkcloth. Tapa will only occur in its Tongan or Samoan meaning of “the undecorated border of a piece of barkcloth.” During my time in the field talking to Tongans in English about my research, I never used the word “tapa” because the differing Tongan and English significance often created confusion. I was better understood with the word ngatu. Moreover, the use of the vernacular names follows the trend

Degei was originally a chief and together with Lutunasobasoba, they were early immigrants to Fiji according to the legends. He was later deified as a snake spirit, dwelling in a cave in the Nakauvadra Range, in Fiji (Capell 1991: 48). 16 Thomas (1997a) argues that the word “Pacific” evokes a cartographic abstraction of scattered islands while the term “Oceania” refers to islands in the Pacific with intimate traffic and colonization relations. 15

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of museums like Te Papa Tongarewa in Wellington, New Zealand, where the computer database uses names of the objects as the people from where they originate, know them. In contemporary Tongan nomenclature, the names used differentiate not only between the barkcloth types, but also between the varieties of ngatu including synthetic materials. Ngatu pepa designates Tongan barkcloth with the base made of a trademarked meshed material such as Pellon or Vilene (Plate 1). Drawing on a personal communication from Maile Drake, the art historian Billie Lythberg (2013: 99) states that “The term ngatu pepa was developed by Tongan ngatu makers because they wanted this innovative cloth to have a ‘traditional Tongan name, rather than a transliteration of the name for the material they were using.’” The anthropologist Ping-Ann Addo (2004b) describes how, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, two types of synthetic barkcloth varieties were distinguished among the Tongan diaspora communities in Auckland and Wellington. Ngatu pepa laulalo is made with one paper mulberry upper layer and a synthetic lower layer or laulalo; ngatu pepa katoa refers to barkcloth entirely (katoa) made with synthetic material. Other names such as ngatu mo‘oni (real barkcloth) and ngatu loi (untrue barkcloth) clearly incorporate an appreciation of value. The anthropologist Adrienne Kaeppler told Lythberg (2013: 100) that when she saw ngatu pepa laulalo in Tonga in the mid-1990s, it was already called ngatu loi. There is yet another set of terms in use to describe plant-based and synthetic barkcloth. The terms ngatu fakatonga, ngatu fakapālangi, and ngatu haafekasi, used primarily in Tongatapu, again denote the layers of cloth from which contemporary Tongan barkcloth is constituted but do so in accordance with what Lythberg (2013) terms “geographical and even biological indexing.” She continues: “Ngatu fakatonga is made from hiapo and is therefore ‘Tongan’; ngatu fakapālangi is made from two layers of synthetic material and is therefore ‘pālangi’ or ‘European’; ngatu haafekasi is made from a layer of hiapo and a layer of synthetic material, and is therefore ‘half-caste’, or half-Tongan and halfEuropean” (Lythberg 2013: 100).

The ancestry of barkcloth ‘Oku va‘ava‘a he ko e tangata— Multiple branches are the nature of man TONGAN PROVERB QUOTED BY TĒVITA O. KA‘ILI (2007) AND ‘OKUSITINO MĀHINA (2010).

The idea of tracing genealogy or hohoko, which literally translates as “connecting repeatedly,” is in Tongan thinking likened to a tree as expressed in the above Tongan proverb (Ka‘ili 2007; Māhina 2010: 175–176). As barkcloth is derived

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from trees, it is particularly relevant to use the concept of hohoko to seek answers to what barkcloth is, where it belongs, and what its future is. These are also questions genealogical research seeks to answer in an attempt to “reconnect with ancestors, living relatives, and birth sands” (Tengan, Ka‘ili, and Fonoti 2010). In Western Polynesia, barkcloth is made from species of the Moraceae family such as the Artocarpus, the Ficus, and the Broussonetia papyrifera Vent,17 or paper mulberry tree (Kooijman 1972: 1). The Artocarpus or breadfruit is thought to have been carried to Polynesia from Southeast Asia by the earliest colonists (Kooijman 1972: 3). Primarily used as food in Tonga, it served only secondarily for the production of a coarser, inferior kind of cloth employed during funerals (Dumont d’Urville 1832b: 269; Erskine 1853: 115; Mariner 1827: vol. 2, 206). The place from where the Ficus was imported is not known, but it seems probable that it is native to the Pacific (Kooijman 1972: 3). However, the most famous examples of barkcloth made from the Ficus are found in Africa, among the Baganda in central Uganda where men produce a cloth of a very rich rusty brown colour (Pole, Doyal, and Burkinshaw 2004: 44). In March 1793 Jacques Julien Houtou de La Billardière, the botanist on the expedition commanded by d’Entrecasteaux, became the only source to claim fau or wild hibiscus (Hibiscus tiliaceus from the Malvaceae family) was used to make an inferior type of Tongan barkcloth (La Billardière 1800: 338).

The tree that traveled through time and space Until the introduction of machine-woven cotton textiles, the paper mulberry was cultivated as a source for paper or barkcloth in Asia and the Pacific. Also in Tonga, its bark was and still is by far the most important material for the production of barkcloth. The people from Java and the Toradja of central Sulawesi consistently used the paper mulberry for their best quality barkcloth. On other islands of the Indonesian archipelago (Madura, Halmahera, Seram, and Sumba) it too was planted especially for this purpose (Kooijman 1963: 57, 61–65). Matthews (1996: 120) states other usages: for rope in Indochina; for small wooden articles and as ornamental and shade trees in the Ryukyu Islands;18 as fodder for cattle in Taiwan where the leaves were cooked; and as a medicinal plant in China and Tonga. Historical documentation on the paper mulberry tree in Polynesia goes back 200 years. In April 1827 the Frenchman Jules Dumont d’Urville, captain of the

Vent refers to Etienne Pierre Ventenat, the person who named the plant after Pierre Marie Auguste Broussonet (1761–1807), a French botanist professor in Montpellier. Ventenat was a professor in Paris and lived between 1757 and 1808 (Davy de Virville 1955; Heukels 1973: 833).

17

The Ryukyu Islands are situated in the Pacific Ocean between Japan and Taiwan.

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Astrolabe is the first to refer to the scientific name Broussonetia papyrifera for paper mulberry in Tonga (Dumont d’Urville 1832b: 269). However, more ancient writings exist about this tree. According to Matthews (1996: 120) the oldest document containing a reference is found in China, more particularly in the Book of Songs comprising poems spanning from the fifteenth to the sixth centuries BC.19 In third-century China, the young leaves of the paper mulberry were described as edible and the plant was used for cloth and paper (Matthews 1996: 120). Archaeological excavations at the Torihama Shell Mound in central Japan, have revealed great time depth for the existence of the Broussonetia species with the discovery of 5,000- to 5,500-year-old sediments, abundant with pollen of the Morus and Broussonetia species (Matthews 1996: 122). As the Moraceae seeds have a short life span, it is unlikely they have naturally dispersed across the ocean (Seelenfreund et al. 2011: 413). Actually, the environmental requirements for natural breeding and dispersal through seeds are not well known. However, the paper mulberry can grow in diverse latitudes and on many types of soil20 (Seelenfreund et al. 2011: 413). In Oceania, flowering by the paper mulberry does not occur (Matthews 1996: 122). Matthews (1996: 117) reports that in its homeland Japan, southern China, and Taiwan, the paper mulberry tree grew wild but was also cultivated. Nowadays, cultivated Broussonetia papyrifera occurs in the equatorial region of Island Southeast Asia, in parts of Melanesia, and throughout Polynesia (Matthews 1996: 118). Cultivar diversity of the Broussonetia papyrifera may have been at an all-time peak in the nineteenth century. It is likely that only a small number of cultivars were introduced to Polynesia (Matthews 1996: 127; Seelenfreund

The poems in the Book of Songs or Book of Odes (Shih Ching or Shi Jing) are traditionally dated between the twelfth and sixth century BC but David Hinton (2008: 5) argues that the earliest poems stretch back beyond the twelfth century. The Book of songs is an epic of the Chinese people from the origins of China’s earliest historical dynasty, the Shang (1766–1122 BC) to the Chou Dynasty (1122–221 BC). It covers a period where Chinese culture transformed from a theocratic society to a secular one in Confucius’s age. An example of a reference to paper mulberry can be found in He Ming, Decade of Tong Gong, Minor odes of the kingdom (Section II, Chapter 3, poem 184) in the Book of Songs (Waley and Allen 1996: 129–223).

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The crane cries in the ninth pool of the marsh, And her voice is heard in the sky. The fish is by the islet, And now it lies hid in the deep. Pleasant is that garden, In which are the sandal trees; But beneath them is the paper-mulberry tree, The stones of those hills, May be used to polish gems. Twentieth-century introductions of paper mulberry trees from Japan to New Zealand have been successful (Matthews 1996: 127) indicating that climate and soil are no limiting factors for breeding. A few Māori are experimenting nowadays with making barkcloth (aute).

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et al. 2011). Nevertheless, different varieties were recognized in Tahiti in 1883 and three varieties were recorded on Tonga in 1963 (Matthews 1996: 127). In the North Island of New Zealand, the paper mulberry was cultivated before the arrival of Europeans, having been brought from tropical Polynesia. However, the preference of the New Zealand Māori for Phormium tenax (New Zealand flax) as a source for clothing contributed most certainly to the dwindling and eventually disappearance of paper mulberry cultivation (Kooijman 1972: 1). In fact, the paper mulberry tends to die out in the tropics unless it is actively looked after, hence the general decline of the plant in many places east of Malaysia, including the Gambier archipelago, various islands in the Society archipelago, and the Cook Islands (Matthews 1996: 122; Seelenfreund et al. 2011: 418). Since propagation by humans is necessary, the arrival and use of the paper mulberry tree in Tonga is closely connected with the human settlement of the area. Around 2000 BC, people had acquired the skills and technology necessary to voyage from Taiwan to the Philippines and spread south to Island South East Asia and east to Oceania. DNA evidence indicates that the origin of Polynesians was Island Southeast Asia. The spread of people went hand in hand with the proliferation of both the Austronesian languages and a particular kind of pottery called Lapita, a name derived from a site in New Caledonia (Irwin 2006: 64). Widely distributed in archaeological sites in Island Melanesia and Western Polynesia, Lapita pottery is identified with a decorative style in which complex impressed patterns are built up from a variety of repeated motifs or design elements (Green 1979: 14–15; Kirch 2000: 88–96). Lapita pottery-making peoples are now regarded as the early Polynesians. More than 200 radiocarbon dates have been obtained from Lapita sites ranging geographically from the Bismarck Archipelago to Fiji, Samoa, and Tonga. The earliest dates from Fiji, situated on the threshold of Melanesia and Polynesia, come in at about 1100–900 BC. The oldest Polynesian Lapita pottery site was found in Nukuleka, located at the northeast entrance of the Fanga ‘Uta/Fanga Kakau lagoon on the island of Tongatapu. Burley, Weisler, and Zhao (2012) date the site between 880 and 896 BC and argue that the settlement of the rest of Western Polynesia was undertaken from that site. It is not certain how Broussonetia papyrifera was introduced in the Pacific by humans. Kooijman (1972: 1) believes the peoples populating the Pacific brought cuttings with them in their canoes in the same way as Melanesian seafarers traveled in the 1960s with plants carefully wrapped in damp earth or bark (Guiart 1963: 28). As the paper mulberry never made it to Borneo, the Philippines, or the high islands of Micronesia, the plant must have been transported to Western Polynesia along a narrow southern route, through Southeast Asia and Melanesia (Matthews 1996: 127–128). The pace at which this occurred is mere speculation: maybe the plant spread rapidly out of Asia as a popular species adopted by people already familiar with bark processing; or, perhaps the plant spread slowly, because special techniques were needed for its cultivation and

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use, or because most people were satisfied with fabrics made from other plants (Matthews 1996: 128).

Barkcloth, an Austronesian trait The earliest archaeological evidence—fourteen stone beaters—for barkcloth production comes from coastal Neolithic sites in the Pearl River delta region of southeast China of which the oldest site, Xiantouling, dates back to 5000 BC (Cameron 2008: 204). Ling and Ling (1963: 31) claim the earliest written record for the use of barkcloth can be found in the first volume of Han Ying’s Han Shih Wai Chuan and dates back to the third century BC: “Yuan Hsien lived in the State of Lu; he usually wore a chu (paper mulberry) hat and carried a chenopod walking stick.” A third-century report describes the people inhabiting the region south of the Yangtze Kiang beating the bark of the fu or paper mulberry tree to make cloth (Kooijman 1972: 1). Many centuries later, Marco Polo (1254–1324) noted the manufacturing of cloth from the fine inner bark between the wood and the outer bark of the mulberry tree (Polo and Yule 2010: 378). Barkcloth most probably was an ancient Austronesian trait brought into Polynesia by Lapita ancestors (Green 1979: 17–18; Matthews 1996: 128). Two wooden barkcloth beaters,21 one of which associated with a stone anvil, all dating from the ninth to the thirteenth centuries and excavated on the waterlogged occupation site of Vaito‘otia and Fa‘ahia on Huahine in the Society Islands, reveal the existence of barkcloth production in Polynesia (Neich and Pendergrast 1997: 10; Sinoto 1979: 10–11). However, it is not known whether paper mulberry was used or when the plant was introduced as no preserved wood or pollen has been identified in any Lapita site (Seelenfreund et al. 2010: 1). Matthews (1996: 128) argues that “Lapita artistic traditions could have been transmitted indirectly to tapa made from Broussonetia papyrifera—via tapa made from other plants, or by other media.” On the other hand, Southeast Asian nomenclature could have been transferred by the Lapita Austronesian-speaking colonizers to plants of the new Oceanic lands, without necessarily accompanying the plant transfer (Yen 1998: 164). Kirch and Green (2001: 185) claim that the ProtoPolynesian reconstruction of *siapo,22 meaning both barkcloth and the paper mulberry plant, procures the most secure linguistic evidence of its antiquity. They moreover propose, building further on an earlier article of Green (1979), that pottery designs of the early eastern Lapita horizon continued to be applied in ancestral Polynesian culture to items of barkcloth. Kirch and Green (2001:

Yosihiko H. Sinoto (1979: 11) indicates five more beaters were found, but does not claim they were used for beating barkcloth on the same site. 22 The asterisk indicates this is a reconstructed word. 21

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185) assert that similar elements and principles of composition are still evident in modern Polynesian barkcloth and tattooing. Actually, only direct archaeological evidence can prove that Broussonetia papyrifera was used for barkcloth in Melanesia or Polynesia before or during the Lapita period (Matthews 1996: 122). Consequently, conclusive archaeological evidence supposes that both plant material of the Broussonetia papyrifera and indication of barkcloth production appear jointly at one site. However, pollen or wood of the Broussonetia is not likely to be found in tropical Polynesia because the climate is not conducive to conservation of plant materials.

2 CREATING BARKCLOTH Créer, c’est vivre deux fois—Creating is living twice ALBERT CAMUS (1994: 130), LE MYTHE DE SISYPHE

The expression “creating” barkcloth implies that the object has a life essence and thus a “biography”1 which involves going through the process of “birth,” “life,” and “dying” (Kopytoff 1986: 66). Individual strips of barkcloth are joined together to form a large piece, which possibly receives specific designs and is then ready to take part in one or several important ceremonial occasions or ritual events. The piece may be cut up and redistributed. After being changed by all these events a ngatu may eventually die because of its total deterioration or start another life as part of a museum collection. Not only objects can have several lives. As Albert Camus (1994: 130) hinted at in the above extract, people also generate multiple “lives” when engaging in creative processes. From 1777 onward, production processes of barkcloth have been recorded as well as their consistencies, continuities, and variations in techniques and procedures. From the middle of the nineteenth century on, technical aspects of making barkcloth are of less concern in ethnohistorical sources while more attention is given to the different uses of ngatu. Captain James Cook and the shipwrecked clerke William Mariner are the main references for the creation of barkcloth. For instance, for his discussion of “Fabrication of Gnatoo,” the sandalwood trader and explorer Peter Dillon (1829: 82–87) copies Mariner’s writings on the topic, while the Royal Navy officer John Elphinstone Erskine (1853: 115) states: “The mode of manufacturing this substance is so minutely described by Mariner, and resembles so nearly the same process at Tahiti as seen by Captain Cook in 1769, that any particular account of it would be superfluous here.” Today the creation of barkcloth is imbued with a feeling of ‘ofa (love and compassion), expressed through the beauty (faka‘ofa‘ofa) of the senses involved

The notion of biography is even more applied by Tongans to kie hingoa or named Tongan mats, which, through their intertwining with people’s personal histories, become attached to illustrious ancestors, myths, events, and places and thus develop their own life histories (Kaeppler 1999b).

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in making it and where particular attention goes to tactility and visual, auditory and olfactive aesthetics (see Chapter 7).

The story of a tree The paper mulberry tree The earliest accounts of the Dutch voyagers Le Maire and Schouten (1616) and Tasman (1643) were vague on the actual material of which Tongan barkcloth was made. Jacob Le Maire mentions “clothes of bark”;2 Willem Schouten only speaks of the “strange colour”3 of the fabric and Abel Tasman describes it as “bark from trees”4 (Le Maire 1945 [1622]: 51; Schouten 1945 [1618]: 179–180; Tasman 1919: 58–60). Cook observed between April 13 and July 13, 1769, during his first voyage, that barkcloth in Tahiti was manufactured from the paper mulberry bark and, possibly drawing on the expertise of the naturalist Daniel Solander, located the geographical origin of the plant in China (Cook 1967: 173). However, in 1773, on his second voyage, he relies on his readers’ earlier knowledge when recording that ngatu is made from the same material as in Tahiti (Cook 1969: 272). Being interested in natural history, George Forster, accompanying his father, the naturalist Johann Reinhold Forster, during Cook’s second voyage, specifies that the paper mulberry tree was used to produce barkcloth in Tongatapu. From Cook’s third voyage onward several people observe and mention the use of the paper mulberry tree in Tonga, cultivated for the sole purpose of making ngatu (Anderson 1967: 905). In present-day Tonga the paper mulberry tree or hiapo5 (Figure 2.1.) is still employed for making barkcloth, while breadfruit and Ficus are no longer utilized (see Chapter 1). There are two kinds of hiapo that are distinguishable by the shape of the leaves: the lau ma‘opo‘opo has rounded, slightly serrated leaves and the lau mahaehae has deeply in-cut leaves. The latter is believed to be the best because of the thickness of the bark. Both cultivars are grown together. Moreover, recent research (Cameron 2000: 10; Seelenfreund et al. 2011: 6) has confirmed the findings of Thomas Frederic Cheeseman, the first professional

Author’s translation from seventeenth-century Dutch: “Cleederen van Bast” (Le Maire 1945 [1622]: 51). 3 Author’s translation from seventeenth-century Dutch: “drollighe coleur” (Schouten 1945 [1618]: 179– 180). 4 Author’s translation from seventeenth-century Dutch: “bast van boomen” (Tasman 1919: 58–60). 5 Whistler (1991: 42–43) describes hiapo as “Hiapo or Broussonetia papyrifera (L.) Vent., the aboriginally introduced paper mulberry commonly cultivated in plantations. Its bark is the source of tapa cloth, which was formerly used for clothing, but today is used primarily in ceremonies, such as gift exchanges in weddings and funerals.” 2

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Figure 2.1  Paper mulberry plantation in Foa. Ha‘apai, March 7, 2003. Photo: Author.

curator of the Auckland museum who saw two types of leaves growing on the same branch of a specimen collected in Rarotonga in 1886 (Cameron 2000: 10; Cheeseman 1903; Seelenfreund et al. 2011: 6).

Cultivating the paper mulberry tree Most accounts concur in saying that the paper mulberry was grown among fruit trees (Cook 1969: 252) such as the lemon tree and the coconut palm (de Viana 1958: 203). Thus paper mulberry formed a full part of the Tongan late eighteenth-century landscape (Cook 1969: 252). Francisco Xavier de Viana, traveling aboard the Descubierta on Malaspina’s expedition, likened the gardens of 1793 Vava‘u to the olive tree plantations and vineyards of southern Europe (de Viana 1958: 203).6 In the early nineteenth century, Fīnau Ulukalala, the chief of Ha‘apai who took young Mariner under his wing, considered hiapo as part

“The lemon tree, the coconut palm, the tree from which they get their cloths, etc. grow intermingled, without being subjected to any order.” Translated from Spanish by the author: “La lima, el coco, el árbol de que sacan sus telas, etc crecen mezclados entre sí, sin sujeción a ningún orden” (de Viana 1958: 203).

6

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UNWRAPPING TONGAN BARKCLOTH

of the vegetable garden (Mariner 1827: vol. 1, 326). About half a century later, on July  20, 1865, Herbert Meade (1871: 208), officer aboard the Curaçoa, described gardens where the paper mulberry trees grew with other food crops including bananas, taro, and yam. Today in Tongatapu and Vava‘u, hiapo is planted together with other food crops. The noble woman, Tuna Fielakepa7 (interview April 8, 2003) recalls that when men planted yams, they would plant hiapo for the women. However, hiapo is rarely encountered in the vegetable gardens (‘uta) of Ha‘apai. Despite twentiethcentury research surmising that the scanty soils of Ha‘apai and Niuatoputapu make growing the paper mulberry tree extremely difficult (Kooijman 1972: 297) or even plainly impossible (Neich and Pendergrast 1997: 41), in 2003 I did walk through paper mulberry tree fields extending as far as the eye can reach on the island of Foa, north of Lifuka, the main island in the Ha‘apai group. This shows that hiapo grows very well there. I witnessed how in Foa (Figure 2.1) large patches of land are prepared in order to plant the paper mulberry cuttings (afu). The place is renowned for producing the kingdom’s best paper mulberry trees, which are exported to the barkcloth-making areas in Tongatapu and Vava‘u. Hiapo is therefore called “the gold of Ha‘apai.” However, people in Ha‘apai do not produce barkcloth and have long specialized in mat weaving. The shipwrecked nineteenth-century youngster, William Mariner (1827: vol. 1, 154) attributed this specialization to the absence of the koka‘anga tree (Bischofia javanica) from which the barkcloth dye is extracted and not to an impossibility of growing paper mulberry in the archipelago. Tuna Fielakepa on her visit to the Australian Museum in Sydney in 2012 stated that women from Ha‘apai who are essentially weavers, have now started using the hiapo plantation in Foa to make their own barkcloth (Williams 2012). Paper mulberry can be planted all year round (Tamahori 1963: 17). However, today many Tongans assert that the traditional time for planting the hiapo is when it rains, that is, in the wet season running from November till May. Tuna Fielakepa (interview April 2003) said the main time is June, but people can start from April onward, while Tamahori (1963: 17) states that March is the ideal month, because plants will grow stronger and taller if planted then. Kerry James (1988b) refers to her informant Sālome who plants young shoots between January and March. Johann Reinhold Forster, the naturalist aboard the Resolution, gave in 1773 the only historical account explaining how in Tonga trees are cared for once planted: “The Ground is trenched or fenced, cleared, dug & prepared, the young Shoots are regularly planted in rows & lines, kept free from weeds & cleared of all lateral branches” (Forster 1982: 397). Still nowadays in Tonga, the hiapo is looked after in a similar way. Keeping it free from side branches ensures the Her full name is Lady Tunakaimanu Fielakepa, but she uses the short version of Tuna.

7

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33

straightness of the stem (Free Wesleyan Church of Tonga 2002: 14). Since the arboriculture of hiapo relies almost solely on knowledge and not on physical strength, which characterizes the cultivation of food crops carried out by men (Walter 1994: 199), tending paper mulberry trees is from a Tongan perspective ideally suited for women.

Kuo hina e hiapó—harvesting the paper mulberry tree8 Both the naturalist Johann Reinhold Forster and the surgeon William Anderson, respectively, traveling on the second and third Cook voyage said that the height and thickness of the tree determined its harvesting (Anderson 1967: 905–906; Forster 1982: 397). Mariner on the other hand focused on the technical aspects of cutting the tree: “A circular incision being made round the tree near the root with a shell, deep enough to penetrate the bark, the tree is broken off at that part, which its slenderness readily admits of” (Mariner 1827: vol. 2, 202). Nowadays, the silvery white color of the bast sets in the harvesting or amusi of the hiapo by the men. At all of the larger markets in the islands of the kingdom, women sitting in little groups sell cut trees (Figure 2.2). It usually takes two to three years for the tree to mature. Ensuing the cutting of the main stem, the secondary growth starts which is ready for harvesting in one to one and a half year’s time. At least two cuttings can be taken after the main cutting, one from the second and another from the third growth, before the plantation is abandoned and a new one started (Tamahori 1963: 19).

Stripping the bark Eighteenth-century accounts report that the bark is stripped and soaked after which the outer bark is removed with a shell (Anderson 1967: 905; Forster 1982: 397). Mariner’s description of the first decade of the nineteenth century is the most elaborate: “When a number of them [stems] are thus laid on the ground, they are left in the sun a couple of days to become partially dry, so that the inner and outer bark may be stripped off together, without danger of leaving any of the fibers behind. The bark is then soaked in water for a day and a night, and scraped carefully with shells, for the purpose of removing the outer bark, or epidermis, which is thrown away” (Mariner 1827: vol. 2, 202). Historic accounts correspond more or less with the present-day situation. One of the women running a popular guesthouse since the late twentieth century

The expression “Kuo hina e hiapó” (the paper mulberry tree has turned white) sets in the harvesting of the paper mulberry tree.

8

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UNWRAPPING TONGAN BARKCLOTH

Figure 2.2  Cut paper mulberry trees sold at Sailoame market in Neiafu. Vava‘u, February 2003. Photo: Author.

CREATING BARKCLOTH

35

near the center of Nuku‘alofa also owned a koloa (female valuables) business. She organized the production of ngatu which on each occasion followed a similar pattern. After the men of her extended family had harvested the paper mulberry tree, the women working for her took over. As the stems were left to dry under the roof of a building she had reserved exclusively for the purpose, they lost some of their sap, which facilitated the stripping of the bark (hae). One of the older women was in charge of making the knife cut at the bottom of the stem, and then handing it over to a younger woman. The latter placed the left foot on the part of the stem where the bark had been loosened and the other foot was put on the other end. The young woman enjoyed the necessary strength to pull off the bark in one vigorous movement using the right hand (Plate 2). As she peeled off the bark (inner and outer bark), she rolled it with the inner side out. Soon after the hae, another woman carried out the lighter job of separating the inner from the outer bark (to‘o tu‘a, fohi tutu) by lifting the green part at its root end, gaining sufficient grasp on it and subsequently pulling it off. The thus obtained white strips (tutu) were hung to dry (tauaki) and coupled up (fakahoa) according to width and length. A woman then rolled up (fakate‘ete‘etepuaka) the strips into bundles of ten pairs (tekau), corresponding to twenty pieces of tutu. The bundles were stored until the time came for beating them. Today Tongan people do not ordinarily use shells to scrape off the inner bark, nor is the bark soaked before separating the inner from the outer bark.

The archipelago’s heartbeat During several stays in Tonga in the twenty-first century I became fascinated with the sounds produced by the beating of the inner bark of the paper mulberry tree, something I experienced as the archipelago’s heartbeat. I am not the only visitor whose attention was drawn to this “music” since historical accounts repeatedly testify of its pleasing and enjoyable tones: “Early in the morning, when the air is calm and still, the beating of gnatoo at all the plantations about has a very pleasing effect; some sounds being near at hand, and other almost lost by distance; some a little more acute, others more grave, and all with remarkable regularity, produce a musical variety that is very agreeable, and not a little heightened by the singing of the birds, and the cheerful influence of the scene” (Mariner 1827: vol. 2, 203). Nathaniel Turner, one of the first missionaries to Tonga, was astonished when on August 10, 1829—a Sunday—he heard the beating of barkcloth: “We were agreeable [sic] surprised today, in such [?] hearing the people beating their Gnatu, or cloth, the cause I do not know but can hardly think it is out of any respect to the Sacred day of the Lord” (Turner 1829). Nowadays, however, women do not beat the tutu on Sundays. Also Erskine was very impressed by the continuous beating of tutu when he entered the port of Vava‘u in 1849:

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When once inside of the port, however, signs of the most industrious cultivation show themselves, the country, where not green, looking like one large garden, whilst from every village comes the sound, not altogether unmusical, of the mallet used in beating out the native cloth, in which occupation the women seem to be unceasingly employed from early dawn to sunset. (Erskine 1853: 114–115) In 1850, Oswald Brierly, aboard HMS Meander under the command of Henry Keppel, was also struck by an “incessant hammering which commences at daybreak, and continues without intermission until about noon” (Brierly 1852: 102). To beat bark, two tools are used: the anvil or tutua and the mallet or ike. Johann Reinhold Forster (1982: 397) mentioned these tools in 1773 but the first detailed description of the ike was made by Cook who witnessed the barkcloth making process in June 1777 during his one-month stay in Tongatapu: “The Mallet is of the same shape as that used at Otaheite,9 each side being three inches broad, one of which is smooth and the other three marked length ways with five or Six grooves, or furrows” (Cook 1967: 172). Anderson (1967: 905) described the anvil as “the trunk of a small tree squar’d.” William Mariner (1827: vol. 2, 202–203) went into even more detail for the description of the tutua and the ike when writing about the “fabrication of gnatoo” as he witnessed during his four years’ stay in Tongatapu in the first decade of the nineteenth century: “Being thus far prepared, the operation of tootoo [tutu], or beating, commences. This part of the work is performed by means of a mallet a foot long, and two inches thick, in the form of a parallelopipedon, two opposite sides being grooved longitudinally to the depth and breadth of about a line, with intervals of a quarter of an inch. The bark, which is from two to five feet long and one to three inches broad, is then laid upon a beam of wood about six feet long, and nine inches in breadth and thickness, which is supported about an inch from the ground by pieces of wood at each end, so as to allow of a certain degree of vibration.” The beating tools have not undergone any significant changes in the past 250 years. In 2003, the strips were still beaten on a long log tutua (anvil), which is made from toi (Alphitonia zizyphoides),10 feta‘u (Calophyllum

Cook describes the Tahitian barkcloth beaters he saw during his stay from April 13 to July 13 as follows: “the beaters are made of hard wood with four square sides and about a foot long including the handle which is round, each of the square sides are about 3 or 4 inches broad and cut into grooves of different fineness this makes the Cloth look at first sight as if it was woe with threed” (Cook 1968: 132–133).

9

Toi is an indigenous tree to Tonga, which grows occasionally in forests of all the main Tongan islands. The fine timber is used for making houses, canoes, and barkcloth anvils (tutua). The leaves are sometimes used as a soap substitute, and a combination of bark extracts from this and several other species is used to make a remedy for stomachache and a complex set of abdominal ailments collectively called kahi (Whistler 1991: 126).

10

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37

inophyllum),11 or ngatata (Elattostachys falcate).12 Two fresh green sticks that are still flexible, with at each end a dry coconut husk turned the fiber side up, support the log. The ike or beater is made from toa (Casuarina equisetifolia).13 Three sides of the ike are grooved longitudinally to help spread the fibers, one side is smooth for the final beating. The ike are square bottomed and narrow gradually to end in a rounded grip, which covers about one third of the beater. Most historic sources agree that the bark must be gorged with water before being beaten (Anderson 1967: 905; Erskine 1853: 115; Mariner 1827: vol. 2, 202). Anderson (1967: 905) for example, mentions that the tutu was soaked for a night. Mariner (1827: vol. 2, 202) speculates the soaking allows the bark to become “tougher, and more capable of being beaten out into a firm texture,” while Cook (1967: 171–173) and Dumont d’Urville (1832b: 269) make no mention of the soaking. Retting the bast before beating and “watermarking” it with patterned or finely grooved beaters was confined to eastern Polynesia. Yet, Burrows (1970: 19) mentions one exception with Tonga. Indeed, Mariner (1827: vol. 2, 202) describes a process that seems to be retting; it is however too short for any fermenting to happen. In early twenty-first-century Tonga the preparations before the beating are still carried out in more or less the same way: the strips are soaked overnight in a bowl of water. Some women use Omo washing powder to bleach the strips. Usually, the soaked tutu is scraped with a small knife or shell. This scraping of the tutu is not to be confused with the scraping that used to be done to remove the outer bark—as discussed earlier—since the outer rind has already been removed. After discussing the sound of the beating of the bark, the tools, the preparations, the beating in itself is due for exploration. William Mariner (1827: vol. 2, 203–204) describes in detail how bark is beaten, being folded repeatedly14 and stresses 11 The feta‘u is a large indigenous tree occasional in littoral and coastal forests and sometimes in villages in Tonga. The strong, durable wood is used in house construction and carved into kava bowls, boats, slit-gongs (lali), and handicrafts. The oil expressed from the seed is combined with coconut oil to make lolo Tonga or Tongan oil for massaging. The tree is widely applied in medicine: a solution of crushed leaves makes an eye wash, and a boiling infusion of leaves is used in a steam bath (faka‘ahu) treatment for ailments thought to be caused by evil spirits (tevolo) (Whistler 1991: 31–32).

Ngatata is a large indigenous tree common in forests of all the main Tongan islands. The timber is valued in house construction and canoe building, and for making barkcloth anvils (tutua), tool handles, and other artifacts (Whistler 1991: 39).

12

The toa is the indigenous or aboriginally introduced ironwood or she-oak tree occasional in littoral forests of the main islands of Tonga and often cultivated. The extremely hard wood is used for posts, tapa mallets (ike), war clubs (in former days), tool handles, and other wooden artifacts. A potion made from bark scrapings is commonly prepared as a treatment for mouth infections and stomach ache. Toa is called the same throughout its Polynesian range (except in Tahiti) (Whistler 1991: 125).

13

See also Anderson (1967: 905): “According to the size of the bark a piece is soon produc’d but the operation is often repeated by another hand, or it is folded several times and beat [sic] longer by the same, which seems rather to close than divide its texture.”

14

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that several women can work together: “Two or three women generally sit at the same beam; each places her bark transversely upon the beam immediately before her, and while she beats with her right hand, with her left she moves it slowly to and fro, so that every part becomes beaten alike; the grooved side of the mallet is chiefly used first, and the smooth side afterwards. They generally beat alternately …. When one hand is fatigued, the mallet is dexterously transferred to the other, without occasioning the smallest sensible delay. In the course of about half an hour it is brought to a sufficient degree of thinness, being so much spread laterally as to be now nearly square when unfolded; for it must be observed, that they double it several times during the process, which means it spreads more equally, and is prevented from breaking. The bark thus prepared is called fetagi [feta‘aki], and is mostly put aside till they have a sufficient quantity to enable them to go on at a future time with the second part of the operation,….” In 2003, Tongan women in the village of Niutoua distinguished three stages in the beating process. After the tutu has been soaked overnight, the water is quickly squeezed out by running the fingers over the strips and laid on the tutua. Fakapā15 is the first stage and consists of softening up the tutu by beating it. Two pieces of tutu that have undergone this first stage in the beating process are laid head (‘ulu) by tail (iku) overlapping. The two combined tutu are called tahanga‘ahoa. The second stage named ‘opo‘opo16 or hoa17 consists of the continuous beating and folding of the piece. First the piece is folded into three parts. This is beaten with the grooved side of the beater. It is then folded in two over its width. When the beating is finished, the tutu is opened but now folded into three parts following the length. In the final stage or tatala the piece of barkcloth is unfolded, smoothed up with the flat side of the ike, and is now called feta‘aki (Plate 3). According to Mariner, beating the bark in the nineteenth century was often done in groups. The Royal Navy officer John Elphinstone Erskine (1853: 136) reported around 1850 how women in a penitentiary institution worked together to beat. Late nineteenth-century photographs attest to women beating together (Düring 2001: 57). The photographer Ernest W. Henderson documented in the London Illustrated News in 1890 three women beating barkcloth together around 1889 (Figure 2.3). A photograph taken around 1900, showing men and women holding up a beater, suggests that men also beat the bark (Düring 2001: 58). Today, however, it is exceptional to see men beating the bark. In ‘Ohonua, the capital of ‘Eua, I witnessed husband and wife pounding the bark together on

Churchward (1959: 90) gives the following definition: “to beat a single layer of paper-mulberry bark in making tapa cloth.”

15

Churchward (1959: 566) gives the following definition: “to beat two layers of paper-mulberry bark together.”

16

Churchward (1959: 226) gives the following definition: “to be partners.”

17

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39

Figure 2.3  Three women seated outdoors on the ground beating strips of bark. One of the women is wearing a white barkcloth wrap-around skirt. Photographed by Ernest W. Henderson. Gelatin silver printing, 11.4 × 15.5 cm, Oc, B130.22 © The Trustees of the British Museum.

April 26, 2003. When I asked permission to take a photograph, the husband insisted I should only focus on his wife, claiming he was not so good at it and he was only helping out because his wife had not finished her share of feta‘aki for the barkcloth-making meeting coming up in an hour. This was the only instance that I saw a man beat the bark and the first and last time I was not encouraged to take photographs. The tutua is sometimes long enough to allow several women to sit next to each other. Tamahori (1963: 33) recalls four to six women working together during her fieldwork in 1958 and 1959. During my stays in Tonga, I saw only on one occasion two women beating tutu together (Plate 3). Beating the bark with a heavy wooden beater for long periods is assuredly arduous work, requiring strength, stamina, and skill. Teilhet-Fisk (1995) discussed how Geoffrey Houghland, a former Peace Corps volunteer, invented a quiet machine that works like a wringer and can replace the strenuous beating activity. His objective was to diminish the time spent on a—as he puts it—“noisy process” and “physically demanding aspect of manufacturing tapa cloth” (Teilhet-Fisk 1995: 127). This machine, however, never became popular. TeilhetFisk (1995: 143) thinks a combination of reasons is responsible for the failure of the barkcloth beating machine. First, Tongan women do not want male intrusion

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(machines are maintained by men) into an essentially female occupation. She further agrees that most of the reasons lie deeper and are linked to the Tongan culture’s attitude toward all forms of acculturation and the nature of its impact on gender structures, status, and rank. Tuna Fielakepa, who admitted finding the beating of barkcloth too hard a work for her, did not use the beating machine of which she possessed in 2003, one of the two examples left in Tonga (Tuna Fielakepa, personal communication 2003). However, Tuna Fielakepa believes that the recent improvement of the old barkcloth machine by a female student might lead the way for new developments in terms of barkcloth beating in Tonga (Tuna Fielakepa, personal communication November 2014). What happens after the bark has been beaten into strips? Anderson (1967: 905) describes in June 1777 that the beaten barkcloth strips are laid to dry after which they are glued together “with the viscous juice of a Berry call’d ’Tooo” to form long runners of barkcloth. In present-day Tonga the beaten strips are left to dry a little and are put under the bed to flatten. The rough edges are taken off (mutumutu) with a sharp instrument, for example, a shell or a knife. Holes are patched up (monomono) with little pieces of barkcloth. Half-boiled mānioke (tapioca) is used as glue. Several finished feta‘aki are stuck together to form long runners (papanaki) to be used as upper layer (lau‘olunga) or under layer (laulalo) in the koka‘anga, process through which a large piece of barkcloth is assembled and dyed.

The substance of color Tongans like three colours: white for purity, brown for beautiful like us and black because it is awesome. TUNA FIELAKEPA, TAHITI, NOVEMBER 2014

James Cook (1969: 266), in his first voyage to Tonga (1773), suggests that most of the late eighteenth-century cloths were dyed in “black, Brown, Purple, yellow, and Red” and glazed over to “resist rain for some time which Otaheite18 cloth will not.” George Forster (1999: vol. 1, 229) observed the glazing made of “a strong glue, which made it stiff and fit to resist wet.” His father Johann Reinhold Forster (1982: 397) mentioned two colors, red and yellow, and states their botanical names: “They die [sic] their Cloth with the milky Juice of a kind of little Fig [Ficus tinctora], which grow [sic] on these Isles; the yellow is done by the yellow Juice of the Hibiscus pesatains [sic], the red is done by adding the Juice of a green leaf either of the Convulvulus Pes Caprae or of the Anthericum hyacinthoides

Cook refers here again to what he witnessed when he visited Tahiti during his first voyage from April 13 to July 13, 1769.

18

CREATING BARKCLOTH

41

[Dianella ensifolia] which they bruise & mix with the Fig’s Milk, & this mixture changes into a bright & fine red” (Plate 4). Many of the scientific crew on Cook’s ship remained puzzled about the plants used to make dyes (Cook 1967: 171; Forster 1982: 545). However, William Anderson (1967: 905–906) on Cook’s third voyage (1777) thought he had some clues: “… [juice] express’d from the bark of a tree with the outer rind scrap’d off call’d Kokka, and rub it briskly upon the cloth, which at once leaves a dull brown colour and a gloss for glazing & dryness upon its surface, … and when they want to produce a black colour they mix the soot procur’d from an oily nut calld [sic] Dooe’dooe [tuitui] with the juice of the Kokka in different quantitys as they want the tinge.” Cook (1967: 172) agrees with this description. David Samwell (1967: 1037)—the surgeon’s mate on the Resolution from February 1776 until August 1778, after which he was transferred to the Discovery as surgeon replacing Anderson who died during the voyage—attests that the brown color is the most common. Mariner’s (1827: vol. 2, 204–205) description resembles most closely the way dyes are produced today. He distinguishes koka dye and candlenut dye as well as the red glazing called hea in the first decade of nineteenth-century Tonga: “At the same time others are busy scraping off the soft bark of the coca tree and the tooi-tooi [tuitui] tree, either of which when wrung out without water, yields a reddish brown juice, to be used as die [sic]… or staining it in certain places with the juice of the hea, which constitutes a brilliant red varnish.” Dumont d’Urville (1832b: 269) and Erskine (1853: 135) confirm Mariner’s description. However, Erskine (1853: 115, 136) stresses that the dyes and the varnish do not protect barkcloth from water. This might imply that varnishing is less of practical significance—making it waterproof—than of aesthetic meaning, shininess being identified with a finished and beautiful product (see Chapter 7). Anderson’s (1967: 906) 1777 account is the only historical source which proposes that a different color of barkcloth in Tonga corresponds to a different use: “They say that the black sort, which is commonly glaz’d, makes a cold dress but the other a warm.” To summarize late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century descriptions of Tongan barkcloth: the colors were black, brown, red, yellow, and purple. The colors black, brown, and red were obtained from koka (Bischofia javanica),19 tuitui (Aleurites moluccana), or candlenut and from hea (Parinari insularum).20 Tamahori (1963: 52) speculates that the yellow color, of which Cook talked in 1773, might be tavahi21 or a pale shade of koka. It is not known how the purple was obtained

The koka is an aboriginally introduced or native tree common in plantations and secondary forests in Tonga. A brown juice extracted from the bark is used to color barkcloth, and the timber is sometimes used for posts and in-house construction. An infusion of the scraped bark is given to infants to treat mouth infections (Whistler 1991: 58). 20 Hea is an aboriginally introduced tree uncommon in and around villages in Tonga. The fragrant fruit is used for making leis (necklaces) and for scenting coconut oil (Whistler 1991: 40). 19

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or if it was in fact a shade of gray produced from sprinkled tuitui soot rubbed in with one of the reddish dyes. The Tongan word for gray is tukumisi, which is the same word used for sea-urchin that exudes a reddish purple and yellow (Tamahori 1963: 52). The corpus of historical barkcloths I studied, however, reveals a smaller array of colors ranging from shades of brown to a reddish brown, known as melomelo and real black or ‘uli. In present-day Tonga four materials are used to make dye: to the koka (Bischofia javanica) and tuitui (Aleurites moluccana) mentioned in historical sources are added tongo (Rhizophora mangle) and ‘umea (red earth). Koka gives a relatively flat brown color, tuitui is rather glossy and almost red and so is tongo. Tuitui stiffens the cloth. Those dyes are applied next to commercial dyes that can be bought in shops in the capital Nuku‘alofa. Sitting on her chair at the back office of the Langa Fonua22 in the center of Nuku‘alofa, which she shared with her sisters, Tuna Fielakepa told me how young boys collect the Bischofia javanica scrapings in order for the women to make dye. They collect koka bark by first scraping the dirt from the tree and then scraping the bark. They have to be careful not to remove too much bark as not to damage the tree. It might die if one is not careful. It is best to scrape the trunks, which have not been scraped for several years. The pieces of bark are then rubbed to make them softer and soaked in water overnight (Tuna Fielakepa, personal communication, April 16, 2003). In the old part of the capital city, called Kolomotu‘a, women worked under the instructions of Tuna Fielakepa at making the dye. The women spread out the pulp in the fautaukoka, the wringer (Plate 5). Earlier, women had woven this out of fau (Hibiscus tiliaceus)23 with the explicit purpose of squeezing (tau) koka, tongo, and tuitui dye. The wringer filled with koka scrapings was neatly bound together and then flung over a pole, which a man had secured, between two forked trees. The ends of the fautaukoka were securely tied and a long pole was put through the formed loop. Two women then started to push the pole around so that the fautaukoka was twisted and the juice squeezed out. A bowl placed underneath collected the juice. For the final part of the squeezing, heavy women sat on the stick. When enough juice had come out,

Tavahi or Rhus taitensis is a large tree indigenous to Tonga and common in its forests and plantations (Whistler 1991: 121).

21

Langa Fonua ‘a e Fefine Tonga is Tonga’s national women’s association which was established by Queen Sālote in 1954 (von Gizycki 1997: 72, Wood-Ellem 1999: 264).

22

The indigenous beach hibiscus is a common tree of littoral habitats and disturbed forests in Tonga. The soft, durable wood is frequently used in light constructions. The bark fibers are or were fashioned into cordage, sandals (teka), garment mats (such as ngie, which were used during travel at sea, and salusalu, a common garment used nowadays), kava strainers, and other items. Various parts of the plant are used in Tongan remedies; most commonly the bark slime is applied to eye ailments, and an infusion of the bark is drunk to treat stomach ache. Two varieties of fau are recognized, kula and hina, based on the color differences of the bark (Whistler 1991: 29).

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the stick was let loose so that it could unwind to its original position (Plate 5). The wringing process is called tau koka. Tongo and tuitui juices are produced in the same way as koka. Burning the candlenuts in a large metal vessel of which the soot is scraped from the inner surface and mixed with the koka dye makes black dye. These procedures correspond to the pre-1900 accounts. However, none of the consulted historical sources has mentioned earth being a source of dye production. Nevertheless, dye made out of ‘umea or red earth is now commonly utilized. Tongans showed me the places in ‘Eua where this material is extracted and assured me that it could also be found in Fiji.24 Tamahori (1963: 71) asserts that it can be found in Vava‘u too. The earth is gathered and formed into cones, which are left to dry. When needed it is pounded and mixed with the koka dye.

Rubbing boards In 1777 both Cook and Anderson mentioned the rubbing blocks or kupesi used for decorating barkcloth in Tonga. For Anderson (1967: 905) they are “a kind of stamp made of a fibrous substance pretty closely interwoven,” while Cook (1967: 172) notes they “are made of the leaves of the Wharra tree plated one into another, and stitched, or worked over with the fibres of Cocoanut husks by which the pattern is formed so as to give an impression.” He further remarks that coarser barkcloth was not decorated by means of kupesi (Cook 1967: 173). I assume that Cook referred to “fala” when he talked about “wharra.” By the twentieth century the word fala, the general name for several species and varieties of Pandanus, had fallen into disuse. Modern Tongan uses fā (Churchward 1959: 136; Whistler 1991: 24). In the nineteenth century, Mariner (1827: vol. 2, 204) mentioned the use of kupesi and also explained how they were made: “The cobéchi [kupesi], or stamp is formed of the dried leaves of the páoongo [paonga] sewed together so as to be of a sufficient size, and afterwards embroidered, according to various devices, with the wiry fibre of the cocoa-nut husk; they are generally about two feet long and a foot and a half broad. They are tied on to the convex side of half cylinders of wood, usually about six or eight feet long, to admit two or three similar operations to go on at the same time.” Mariner described here a rectangular kupesi; nowadays, kupesi can be rectangular or have the shape of any particular motif (e.g., a star, a fish). Some women specialize in making kupesi, becoming very skilled as Brierly noticed in Tongatapu in 1850. He considered kupesi-making an art: “In one house we found a native artist, a woman who made design for patterns on tappa. She was at

In May 2003, I saw a dried cone of ‘umea near Suva, the capital of Fiji.

24

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work, and had several lying by her which she had just finished” (Brierly 1852: 102). I was given to witness Pipiena demonstrating her skills in making kupesi. She was sitting on a chair next to the photocopying machine in the back office of the Langa Fonua handicrafts shop in Nuku‘alofa. She made the desired shape by sewing a sheet of kaka—the sheath that wraps around the base of the coconut palm frond—and pandanus (paonga), together with fau (wild hibiscus). To make the design, she sew with a single strand of coconut fiber (kavele‘ipulu) and using a sturdy needle, little sticks of tu‘aniu (midrib of a coconut leaflet) on the rectangle (Plate 6). Pipiena told me that she was often asked to make the most popular kupesi such as the manulua, tokelau feletoa, fata (‘o Tu‘i Tonga), or amoamokofe designs. In the past, kupesi belonged to specific aristocratic families and it was therefore forbidden to copy their designs. The anthropologist Marie-Claire Bataille-Benguigui (2000: 131) says that kupesi were always in hands of chiefly women. Each individual rubbing pattern had a meaning: telling stories of the past and happenings in the islands or representing royal emblems; in short they are a sort of history books (see Chapter 4). The kupesi themselves are still inherited from generation to generation, but access has become more liberal (DouaireMarsaudon 1998: 131; Kooijman 1972: 314, 319). They can be owned by a group of women (kautaha or toulanganga), or by an individual who inherited them.

Sticky stuff Eighteenth-century sources mention two types of glue used to stick several smaller pieces of barkcloth into one large sheet. Johan Reinhold Forster (1982: 397) is the only one to talk about “the Hibiscus esculentus25 or Okra.” Anderson (1967: 905) refers in 1777 to the “juice of a Berry call’d ‘Tooo” as does Cook (1967: 172), who writes that the berry is “used when green, is something larger than a current berry and is an excellent gluten. The work women hold a bunch of them between her [sic] teeth from which she plucks one when wanted.” The botanist Whistler (1991: 128) thinks the berries are of the tou (Cordia aspera), a small indigenous tree now uncommon in the littoral and coastal forests of the main Tongan islands. Mariner (1827: vol. 2, 204) is the first to state that next to the “toe [tou] berries” glue could be made from “mahoá [mahoa‘a] root.” Mahoa‘a (Tacca leontopetaloides) is the indigenous or aboriginally introduced Polynesian arrowroot growing commonly in the littoral and coastal forests of Tonga (Whistler 1991: 80). The use of the word tou is confusing in historical texts as it can refer both to the white berries of the Cordia aspera and to a paste made of boiled arrowroot (Whistler 1991: 128). Thomas West (1865: 138), a

This plant is often placed in the genus Hibiscus but is in fact an Abelmoschus esculentus.

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Wesleyan missionary working in Tonga in the mid-nineteenth century, agreed in his account with Mariner, stating that the arrowroot was the primary glue used to create barkcloth. In contemporary Tonga, barkcloth-making women use as glue half-boiled mānioke tuber (tapioca), which is cut in two and partly peeled. They rub the starchy inside on the cloth. However, on numerous occasions, women made glue from baking flour boiled with water and added kerosene to prevent insects from eating the cloth.

Supersizing it The koka‘anga No stage in barkcloth creation has been more discussed than the koka‘anga. It is the procedure by which several sheets of barkcloth are assembled and painted concurrently. According to Mariner (1827: vol. 2, 204) koka‘anga signifies “printing with coca.” For Erskine (1853: 135) it means “the cementing of native cloth, and colouring it with the juice of the ‘koka’ bark.” Many report that the dye functions both as a dye and as a glue (Anderson 1967: 906; Erskine 1853: 135–136). The earliest accounts of koka‘anga date from 1777, which both Cook (1967: 172) and his surgeon Anderson (1967: 905) narrated elaborately. During the third voyage the “working table” or papa koka‘anga was detailed as a hollowed out tree trunk with the round side turned up measuring “fifteen or eighteen inches over” upon which kupesi were fixed by means of a piece of barkcloth. Historical texts, however, do not point out where the koka‘anga is habitually held, which considering the size of the papa koka‘anga, must have been a fixed place so as not to move it continuously. Although the koka‘anga procedure has undergone hardly any changes over the last two and a half centuries, speculation on the preferred locations for this activity is impossible (see further in this chapter: Working together). In 2003, about fourteen women would gather in the fale koka‘anga (the barkcloth-making house), facing each other at both long sides of the papa koka‘anga, a convex or nowadays often flat bench. First several kupesi (rubbing boards) are secured with feta‘aki pieces glued with half boiled mānioke on the bench which is divided over its length by a cord and edged off on the short borders with another cord. Cook (1967: 172–173) recounted in 1777 what happened after having spread a cloth smoothly over the papa koka‘anga: “Over this first cloth is pasted a second and some times a third if the cloth is intended to be thick, the last is a[l] ways the best. After all the holes, if any, are repaired by pasting on patches, the whole is gently rubed [sic] over with a sort of varnish, or oily substance, which is expressed from the bark of a tree called by them [sic]. At the same time this is laying on they press the Cloth with the hand so that it receives the impression of the pattern …. The first length being finished they remove it of the block and

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begin with another, thus they continue pasting one piece to another and working one length after another till it is the length they intend it. The hollowed side of the log of wood is to receive the ends of the unworked cloth, so that they may be out of the way of the work women.” While Anderson (1967: 906) suggests that two or three layers of barkcloth are pasted together following the length of the papa koka‘anga, which “makes it impossible to tear the cloth in any direction but one,” barkcloths in museum collections show—in as far as could be attested—that the several layers were placed perpendicularly. Tongan women assured me that still today crossing the layers is important to confer strength to the barkcloth and is also one of the significant differences with Tongan-style barkcloth produced in Eastern Fiji. Indeed, Kooijman (1977: 126–127) explains how every lalaga (langanga in Tongan) overlaps slightly with the previous one. In Tonga, when the layers were pasted together, the top layer was rubbed with a wad of barkcloth drenched in dye, which made the kupesi designs underneath come through. So Anderson (1967: 906) continues: “In this manner they proceed joining and staining by degrees till they produce a piece of such length and breadth as they want, generally leaving a border of a foot broad at the sides and longer at the ends unstained.” Mariner (1827: vol. 2, 205) accounts about a peculiar procedure which consisted of “baking” the piece of ngatu in an underground oven causing the koka dye to become darker and giving the piece “a peculiar smoky smell.” Comparably, Addo (2003: 145) explains how some wrap-around mats were in the beginning of the twentieth century “baked” by burying them in the ashes of burnt lime coral after having been soaked in seawater. This procedure gives a yellowish tint to the light brown fibers and they become soft to touch. In 2003, the koka‘anga parties in different villages of the main island of Tongatapu followed a similar pattern. The papa koka‘anga was measured lengthwise to make sure the laulalo or under layers are cut the same length. The lau‘olunga, the top layer, which is always the best quality cloth, was cut at about four to five meters. One long laulalo was laid on the bench over its length and rubbed with glue made from boiled mānioke (tapioca) to which several runners were glued lengthwise and slightly rubbed. Subsequently three to four strips of lau‘olunga were laid cross-wise, to cover one length of the bench. This layer of the cloth was rubbed with koka, tongo, or a mixture of tongo and koka juice using a cloth (tata), which is a small piece of feta‘aki or cotton cloth (usually a cotton face-cloth). Conversely, the glue was applied with the hands even if it consisted of flour-water paste. ‘Umea dye was rarely applied. When finished, one woman shouted ‘alu (go) as a signal to roll up the finished part of the barkcloth. The cloth was lifted on the hiki (lift) signal, moved two langanga—which were numbered and followed the cord division on the bench—and stretched over the bench. The whole process was repeated till they reached ten, fifty, or hundred langanga. The separation between the langanga is marked in brown dye on both the white

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tapa borders, with the key of a pandanus fruit, following the line formed by the cord in the middle of the bench. A koka‘anga is a group activity: the women joke, sing, and talk while working and the children run around. When the work was finished, the women at one side of the papa koka‘anga had in their lap a large roll of ngatu, which was unrolled to dry in an open spot in the garden. When doing this, women used half-boiled mānioke to glue parts together that might not be sticking sufficiently. The cloth was weighed down by putting coconuts, branches, and stones on the ngatu (Plate 7). The koka‘anga is the process that has changed the most over the centuries with the use of new glues (see earlier) and the replacement of the bottom and sometimes also the top layer with a meshed fabric such as Vilene, which is easier, less labor-intensive, and cheaper to procure (Plate 1).

Overpainting James Cook (1967: 173) described in 1777 that a finished ngatu was obtained by overpainting it in a darker color, accentuating a few elements of the design. The result could be “striped, chequered and [have] other patterns of different colours.” This activity is called tohi. Mariner (1827: vol. 2, 205–206) calls it “toogi hea” and explains that: “This is done in straight lines along those places where the edges of the printed portions join each other, and serves to conceal the little irregularities there; also in sundry other places, in the form of round spots about an inch and a quarter in diameter. After the gnatoo is exposed one night to the dew, and the next day being dried in the sun, it is packed up in bales, to be used when required.” Toogi hea probably refers to tukihea. According to Churchward (1959: 507) tuki can mean “to rap, tap, knock; to hit or strike with something hard, to pound, grind, ram, or hammer, to punch, thump, strike with the fist; to stamp (letters) with a postmark.” The latter meaning summarizes the tohi procedure best. The ngatu is “stamped with a postmark” with the hea juice, which makes it ready for “sending,” ready for use. The hea (Parinari insularum) juice is no longer used but has its reminiscences in the word (fo‘i) hea, the “round spots” which typify Tongan-style barkcloth. The hea and dark crescents, caught in a grid of lines forming lozenges, are rendered with great precision on the barkcloth worn by “Fatafegui” described as the favorite of “Vuna”26 by Alejandro Malaspina, leading the Spanish Descubierta and Atrevida on a five-year (1789–1794) journey of discovery (Figure 2.4).

The name Vuna probably refers to the personal name and not to the chiefly title, which was Tu‘iha‘ateiho Fā‘otusia Fakahikuo‘uiha (Bott and Tavi 1982: 165–166). As two daughters of the Tu‘i Tonga Paulaho were married to a chief called Vuna (Langdon 1977), the woman depicted in the drawing would then be Fatafehi Lapaha, second wife of Vuna and younger sister of Sinautakala-‘iFekitele, a Tu‘i Tonga Fefine and sister of the Tu‘i Tonga (Bott and Tavi 1982: 165–166).

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Figure 2.4  “Fatafegui” wearing barkcloth decorated with a grid of lines forming lozenges in which large dark dots and crescents are enclosed. Drawn by Juan Ravenet, 33.5 × 21.5 cm. España. Ministerio de Defensa. Archivo del Museo Naval carp I (38). Fatafegui.

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Erskine (1853: 135–136) described the sort of painting brush used for the tohi in 1849 as “a longish stick, resembling a large camel’s-hair pencil, and completes the pattern with great dexterity and quickness.” He seemingly refers to a pandanus key, sharpened at one end. This is what is still used today in Tonga, though not attached to a long stick. A piece of barkcloth can be painted at any moment and not as Mariner (1827: vol. 2, 205–206) accounts, immediately after the koka‘anga has finished. It is usually done when barkcloth is needed for a ceremonial occasion and is therefore not an occupation of the kautaha or toulanganga (women’s barkcloth-making group). On April 11, 2003, I witnessed how the women of Ma‘ufanga, a village famous for its highly talented ngatu painters, were decorating (tohi) two long pieces of barkcloth (Plate 8). They were preparing the barkcloth for the funeral of someone who was seriously ill and was expected to die soon. One woman was particularly skilled and was working on her own, painting the tokelau feletoa27 design. As increasingly the overpainting is not enhancing the underlying kupesi design, there is a movement toward attaching more importance to the freehand tohi than to the rubbed kupesi design, a development which already started in the 1960s (Tamahori 1963: 112).

Working together While historical texts stress the “moulding,” “battering,” and “spreading” into a “fine stout cloth” (Vason 1840: 106), that is, the technical aspects of barkcloth creation, its social organization is far less examined. What do the writings tell us about the division of labor and the barkcloth making parties?

Division of labor Historical texts affirm that making barkcloth is essentially a female activity (Anderson 1967: 932, Mariner 1827: vol. 2, 206). Mariner (1827: vol. 2, 97) specifies that women employed in ngatu manufacture were often chiefly females for whom the activities were considered “accomplishments, not professions.” Conversely “canoe building, carving ornaments out of whale’s teeth, superintending funeral rites, hewing stone vaults for the burial of chiefs, netting, fishing, house building, tattooing, club carving and engraving, shaving the beard, cooking, rope making, producing bows, arrows, clubs and spears, are practised

The tokelau feletoa is a popular design, which has different interpretations. Some say it refers to the inside of a carefully filleted tuna fish, while others claim it represents a design in the palace of ‘Ulukālala ‘i Feletoa.

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by men” (Mariner 1827: vol. 2, 192–208). Waldegrave (1833: 186), sailing aboard HMS Seringapatam, remarked in 1830 that making barkcloth was one of the most important occupations of Tongan women: “The women appear to be happy and respected; their duties are the care for the children and the manufacture of tapa and dresses. When I visited the huts in the morning, I usually found the mother sitting in the middle of her clean hut, surrounded by her children, occupied with tapa.” In 1840, the explorer Charles Wilkes (1845: vol. 3, 27) confirms Waldegrave’s statement. Jules Dumont d’Urville’s (1832b: 269) description of his visit to Tonga in April 1827 stresses that the creation of female products was considered a pleasant activity which women engaged in out of free will. There remain numerous unanswered questions as to the details of the production process. Did women cultivate and harvest the paper mulberry tree? Were the dyes fabricated by women? Or was only the beating and assembling large pieces of barkcloth a female activity? Who made the tools (anvil and beater)? Little research has been conducted on the division of labor in general and concerning barkcloth more specifically in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Tonga. Historical sources tell us that men were doing all the so-called heavy work such as agriculture, house-building, and deep-see fishing, while women were performing the physically lighter tasks in and around the house including reef fishing or gathering, making barkcloth, and weaving mats (Anderson 1967: 932, Malm 2007, Mariner 1827: vol. 2, 208, William Mariner in Martin 1991: 370–371). Still today women are not expected to undertake any work that demands excessive physical strength or toil in the gardens. Who made the dyes remains unclear. Most historical writers—especially William Anderson and William Mariner—did go to a certain length explaining the technical aspects of how the dyes were obtained but did not mention how the labor was distributed. The only exception is Erskine’s (1853: 135) 1850s account, which implied it were women who made the dye. Making coloring substances might have been a mixed gender activity. This supposition is based on my 2003 fieldwork experience and on the description in historical texts of the general division of labor between men and women. In contemporary Tonga, men and boys collect the bark scrapings for the dye, because this is considered hard work. Women will extract the dye, with the help of men who do the heavy carrying required for slinging the fautaukoka (the koka juice wringer) around a pole. Historical sources only mention women using the paper mulberry tree and the beating tools without explicating whether they actually cultivated the trees and made those tools. Considering the persistence from past to present in technical aspects of making ngatu, it is plausible that there has also been continuity in the division of labor concerning ngatu. Men might have carried out some of the preparatory aspects as is the case today including planting hiapo, taking care of the plantations, assisting in making the koka dye, and manufacturing wooden beating and koka‘anga implements.

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Organization Even fewer historical texts exist concerning the actual organization of barkcloth producing parties of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Different questions obviously arise. Where was ngatu produced? Who were the women producing barkcloth? Did a specific person lead the production? Most of the answers are mere reasonable assumptions based first on what is known in general about social structure and organization of labor during that period and second upon the documented period of the late nineteenth and beginning twentieth centuries. It becomes clear from Mariner’s description that in nineteenth-century Tonga, people were connected to the land and the chief, on whose land they were living (Mariner 1827: vol. 2, 208–209). A chief would have a great number of adherents such as attendants, spoke’s people, and fighting men on which he could call to carry out all sorts of tasks. Chiefs controled the distribution of labor and wealth (Mariner 1827: vol. 1, 120). All production was probably initiated by the chiefly classes and “belonged” to them, but was eventually redistributed and thus partly returned to the commoners (Gailey 1980: 300– 301, 1987b: 69). The same applies to barkcloth: if the chief could call upon the men, then his wife or wives—the chiefly wife or wives—could call upon the women living on the compound. The chiefly classes were the main initiators for barkcloth production and chiefly women having easy access to cloth presided over ngatu, exchanged and “traded” in it (Mariner 1827: vol. 2, 97). While both chiefly and non-chiefly women could produce barkcloth (Gailey 1987a: 84), only chiefly women could dispose of the cloth as they wished. Thus, although not all women may have produced barkcloth, through the system of redistribution, all women had access to barkcloth. Catherine Small’s (1987: 142–143) affirmation that chiefly women would direct the ngatu production to fulfill their own obligations, such as weddings and funerals, suggests that chiefly women would not participate physically in the actual production. This might well have been the case, but on the other hand it could be supposed that chiefly women who made and possessed the kupesi (Mariner 1827: vol. 2, 204) made a material contribution to the creation of barkcloth not only by making kupesi, but also by putting those rubbing boards at the disposal of commoner women. These kupesi stayed within a particular family and were handed down in the female line. Participation in ritual events, weddings, and mortuary rites brought rewards beyond the material acquisition of barkcloth and other prestigious objects and food: it brought recognition as an effective contributing member of society. It is likely that honorable participation in a major public event, generating abundance, would have been a motivating factor for producers, encouraging them to continue production for their chiefs. The kautaha or ngatu-making group was formed toward the end of the nineteenth century and was most popular in the 1980s (Small 1987: 142–147,

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Tamahori 1963: 129–130). The birth of the kautaha should be seen in the light of changing social conditions and new values by the end of the nineteenth century. The adoption of the 1872 “Declaration of Rights” guaranteeing personal freedom and equality for all meant more and more commoners would seek independence from their chiefs which implied that the number of people permanently surrounding the chief diminished considerably (Campbell 2001: 98). This was exacerbated with the arrival of Wesleyan missionaries in the 1820s who encouraged the idea of nuclear families. Moreover, chiefly women became more active in church and educational organizations and therefore had less time and interest to organize the activities of commoner women. Slowly the organization of ngatu-making moved from the chiefly to the commoner women (Small 1987: 142–147, Tamahori 1963: 134), thus the house destined for the production of barkcloth that was probably located on the chief’s compound moved to a central place in the village (Gailey 1987a: 100). Today commoner women are organized in toulanganga, groups that are aimed toward production of barkcloth rather than toward esteem as the kautaha were in the past. However, being part of a toulanganga is still considered prestigious as it ensures women an all-year access to barkcloth (Addo 2003: 145).

3 COLLECTING BARKCLOTH The taste for collecting is like a game played with utter passion MAURICE RHEIMS (1956: 28 IN BAUDRILLARD 1994: 9)

This chapter investigates the reasons and the processes of barkcloth collecting by explorers, beachcombers, merchants, whalers, missionaries, and visitors to Tonga. It will become clear that collecting was and still is a matter of passion as Rheims (1956: 28 in Baudrillard 1994: 9) expresses in the above epigraph. It has resulted in a corpus that forms an epistemological basis for examining creativity in barkcloth types and motifs (Chapter 4). I will also look at what made barkcloth an attractive object to collect. Less than two years after Cook’s return to England from his first voyage into the Pacific (1768–1771), a second expedition was organized to search for Terra Australis, the unknown southern continent. The HMS Resolution and the HMS Adventure left on July 13, 1772. During this voyage the earliest pieces of Tongan barkcloth were collected. Cook followed the routes of the earlier voyage of Abel Tasman, passing Cape Town from west to east. Cook’s first visit to Tonga lasted less than a week, from October 2, 1773— when he reached ‘Eua and sailed on for Tongatapu the next day—to October 7, 1773. He came back to Tonga the following year on June 26, 1774, staying only four days in Nomuka (an island south of the Ha‘apai group) (Map 1) (Bott and Tavi 1982: 19; Salmond 2003: 215–219, 260–263). Except for the artifacts recovered from archaeological excavations (Bott and Tavi 1982; Burley, Weisler, and Zhao 2012; Egan and Burley 2009), Cook’s voyage objects from Tonga constitute the oldest items of Tongan manufacture (Table A.1). From 1796 onward visitors to Tonga include next to explorers, also beachcombers, merchants, whalers, missionaries, colonial officials from neighboring areas, and tourists. As opposed to the explorers, the early nineteenth-century visitors tend to settle in Tonga albeit for a short sojourn, taking the opportunity of the first ship passing to go home. They all, however, shape the narratives of an overarching imperial project (Lamb, Smith, and Thomas 2000: 119). While the actions of these white settlers have been explored (DouaireMarsaudon 2009; Lamb, Smith, and Thomas 2000), little has been said about their ideas on collecting or their actual collecting practices.

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In Tonga, people soon “made the most of their visitors, gifts were exchanged, meals and physical intimacies were shared, ceremonies were performed, while people were sketched, wordlists were compiled, [and] arts and manufactures were collected” (Thomas 2014: 78). As Jennifer Newell (2003) explains “From their first encounters, Pacific islanders and Europeans were fascinated by each other, and the passion for collecting the material creations of the other was mutual.” In my attempt to look at both sides of the process I follow a tradition, which started in the 1960s where historians and anthropologists depicted Islanders as creative actors and not as mere victims who just underwent the explorers’ and later colonizers’ impositions. Anne Salmond was instrumental in developing this thinking with her 1991 book Two Worlds: First Meetings between Maori and Europeans 1642–1772.

Enticing cloth The first collecting of Tongan barkcloths coincides with the eighteenth-century age of Enlightenment. Science was at the time in an expansive phase studying stars, classifying the earth’s plants and animals, and charting the planet’s continents and islands. Changing perceptions that had started in the sixteenth century gave emergence to a third leading power in society—the  scholar— alongside the priest and the ruling class. The scholar was not bound to any particular social class and needed a place in which he could pursue his intellectual occupation without interruption (Schulz 1994: 175). In the first half of the eighteenth century the theories of preceding centuries were consolidated. This led to the awareness of the intrinsic value of “naturalia” and “artificialia,” assembled in separate collections. “Naturalia” were considered products of nature and “artificialia” were the things made by humans (Pomian 1990: 46), even though the distinction between what was “natural” or “cultured” was not always clear-cut (Henare 2005: 41). Cook and his crews accumulated a large amount of ethnographic materials on all of his three voyages (Urban 1998: 65–66). Most of the objects were not collected by Cook himself but by people sailing on his ships. The objects or “artificialia” collected during these Enlightenment voyages were termed “curiosities,” a labeling which pervaded eighteenth-century travel writing. Ethnographic specimens were frequently characterized as being “curious” and as arousing curiosity of the people for whom they were exotic. The nature of the word “curiosity” had an ambiguous character as according to Thomas (1994: 122) it “is not fixed but morally slippery and the legitimacy of curious inquiry is uncertain.” The use of the word “curious” also avoided passing any aesthetic judgments on the objects acquired. Pacific Islanders and Europeans alike went to great lengths to obtain each other’s “exotic” objects. Braving the risk of

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flogging, crew members pilfered the ship’s stores in order to trade privately with Islanders. Men of all ranks on the ships made personal collections. Cook (1969: 249) complained during his brief visit to ‘Eua in 1773 about sailors bartering any of their possessions for cloth and curiosities: “…, by this time we had a great number of the Islanders aboard and about the sloops, some coming off in Canoes and others swimming off, bringing little else with them but Cloth and other curiosities, things which I did not come here for and for which the Seamen only bartered away their clothes.” Johann Reinhold Forster too, noted that the crew on the voyage were crazy after “curiosities,” making it difficult for those like him with an official collecting mission to acquire significant objects and specimens of natural history. On one occasion Johann Reinhold Forster (1982: 647) complained about sailors not wanting to put the boat at his disposal in order “to collect more new things.” The accounts of captains, officers, scientists, and sailors are full with scenes of trade. Johann Reinhold Forster (1982: 555–557) mentions: Today a Saylor offered me 6 Shells to sale, all of which were not quite compleat [sic] & he asked half a Gallon brandy for them, which is now worth more than half a Guinea. This shews [sic] however what these people think to get for their Curiosities when they come home, & how difficult it must be for a Man like me, sent out on purpose by the Government to collect Natural Curiosities, to get these things from the Natives in the Isles, as every Sailor whatsoever buys vast Quantities of Shells, birds, Fish, etc. so that the things are dearer & scarcer than one would believe, & often they go to such people, who have made vast Collections, especially of Shells viz. the Gunner & Carpenter, who have several 1000 Shells: Some of these Curiosities are neglected, broke, thrown over board, or lost. In the collecting process, no “systematic effort was made to acquire either representative samples of a totality or artefacts of particular kinds” (Thomas 1991: 138). The attitude toward collecting was ardent: “The taste for collecting is like a game played with utter passion” (Rheims 1956: 28 in Baudrillard 1994: 9). This passion could be considered as translating a spirit of enquiry and a search to understand the world and the history of mankind. James Cook (1969: 255) noted on his visit to Tonga during his second voyage that this passion for collecting objects was not only taxing to the voyage scientists but was moreover ridiculed by the Tongans: “The different tradeing [sic] parties were so successful to day as to procure for both Sloops a tolerable supply of refreshments in consequence of which I gave the next morning every one leave to purchases [sic] what curiosities and other things they pleased, after which it was astonishing to see with what eagerness everyone [Cook’s men] catched [sic] at every thing they saw, it even went so far as to become the ridicule of

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the Natives by offering pieces of sticks stones and what not to exchange, one waggish Boy took a piece of human excrement on a stick and hild [sic] it out to every one of our people he met with.” Kaeppler (2002: 295) claims there are at least twenty pieces of Tongan ngatu that can be traced to Cook’s voyages (Plates 4, 10, 11, 13–15, Figures 4.2, 4.6). The most committed barkcloth collectors during Cook’s ten day call at Tonga on the second voyage were Johann Reinhold Forster and his son George Forster, traveling as naturalists aboard the Resolution (Kaeppler 1978a: 217). The astronomer Wales records how none of the other people aboard the Resolution had been so eager to accumulate objects (Urban 1998: 65). Both the Forsters acquired large quantities of clothing, ornaments, household and other implements, musical instruments, and weapons. George Forster (1999: vol. 1, 231) expressed in October 1773: “The canoes immediately came alongside the boat, and the natives threw great bales of cloth into it, without asking for anything in return.” Many of their barkcloths, which are now in museums,1 were not actively collected but formed part of presentations or gifts or were gained through barter. It is clear that artifacts, cloth in particular, played an important role in bringing Tongans and Europeans closer to each other and defining the nature of their relations. European trade-cloth and lengths of officers’ white bedsheets were especially sought-after as their close association with Europeans made them act “as trophies of politically powerful allegiances, symbols of material wealth, and high-status adornment” (Newell 2010: 41). European cloth also provided an exotic form of a familiar local object of value, barkcloth. William Wales (1969: 808) noted that in 1773 on his landing in Tongatapu a Tongan chief wanted to show respect by giving presents which included cloth: “But this hospitable King did not stop here but gave him fruits to bring off & shewed him [James Cook] every other mark of respect & friendship that seemed in his power; and when the boat came off it was almost loaded with Cloth, Mats & other things which were hove in by the People.” On Cook’s third voyage to the Pacific, he stayed much longer in Tonga. He first called at Mango in Ha‘apai and reached Nomuka on April 28, 1777; leaving this island on May 14 he arrived at the northern end of Lifuka three days later where he stayed until May 26. Nomuka was again sighted between June 5 and 7 before sailing off to Tongatapu. Cook stayed there one month from June 10 to July 10, 1777. ‘Eua was briefly visited on July 16 after which Cook sailed on to the Society Islands (Salmond 2003: 325–350). During this last visit James Cook (1967: 108) was still amazed at the quantities of cloth that were presented on Forster barkcloths can be found in the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford (UK), the University of Göttingen, Royal Museum of Physics and Natural History in Florence (Italy), Historisches Museum in Berne (Switzerland), and possibly in the Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery, the St. Petersburg Kunstkamera, and in Wörlitz (Veys 2005: 114–121, 132–133).

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his visit to Tonga on May 18, 1777: “There was as much as loaded four boats and far exceeded any present I had ever before received from an Indian Prince. I took the opportunity of his being on board to make him a return so much to his satisfaction, that as soon as he went a shore he made me another present consisting of 2 large hogs a large quantity of cloth and some yams.” Johann Wäber, the official artist on Cook’s third voyage, who signed his works with the anglicized name of John Webber, appears to have been the most avid barkcloth collector during that voyage, not making a systematic collection, but simply acquiring what he could lay his hands on (Veys 2005: 122–124). Europeans definitely understood cloth as an item of status since reciprocal exchanges of textiles marked the encounter. While it is difficult to uncover the intentions of Tongans when barkcloth was presented to their visitors, it does transpire from the accounts that Tongans were enthusiastic participants in these cloth exchanges. It seems that presenting barkcloth was part of a strategy to propitiate, entice, and forge relationships with the European visitors. One can surmise that giving barkcloth might have been a way to neutralize the potentially disruptive forces of the visitors.

Barkcloth appropriations—the Alexander Shaw books A catalogue of the different specimens of cloth collected in the three voyages of Captain Cook, to the southern hemisphere, with a particular account of the manner of the manufacturing the same in the various islands of the South Seas; partly extracted from Mr. Anderson and Reinhold Forster’s observations, And the verbal Accounts of some of the most knowing of the Navigators: with some anecdotes that happened to them among the natives. Now properly arranged and printed for Alexander Shaw, No. 379, Strand, London, MDCCLXXXVII is one of the earliest examples of appropriation of barkcloth by Westerners. The book has excerpts of accounts from the surgeon William Anderson and the naturalist Johann Reinhold Forster, both of whom traveled on James Cook’s voyages, enriched by Alexander Shaw’s2 own observations and forty barkcloth specimens—according to Shaw’s introduction—of which only thirty-nine receive a description in the catalogue. It is not known how many volumes were compiled but Adrienne Kaeppler (1978a: 117) noted in the late 1970s that there were

Little is known about Alexander Shaw. It seems plausible that Shaw spend 27 years in the army before dealing in curiosities from 1783 to 1789 and later becoming a book seller at the Strand, London, from 1789 to 1796, and in Holborn from 1799 to 1802 (Veys 2014).

2

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about thirty extant. More recently in 2009 Maryanne Larkin (2009: 125) increased the number to forty-five. In 2013, Donald Kerr counted sixty-three copies of the book in public and private collections (Kerr 2013: 3). Today I find the book appears less rare than was initially thought, with my current estimate exceeding seventy books that can be found in museums, libraries, and archives in Australia (Adelaide, Brisbane, Canberra, Melbourne, and Sydney), Canada (Victoria and Toronto), New Zealand (Auckland, Christchurch, Dunedin, and Wellington), Austria (Vienna), France (Paris), Germany (Göttingen), Italy (Florence), Switzerland (Berne), the United Kingdom (Aberdeen, Cambridge, Durham, Edinburgh, Glasgow, London, Manchester, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and Oxford), and the United States (Ann Arbor, Bloomington, Chicago, Honolulu, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New York, Philadelphia, and Salem) (Table A.2), but also in the hands of private collectors in Europe,3 Australia, and the United States. Every catalogue is supposed to have twenty barkcloth samples from Tahiti, fourteen from the Hawaiian Islands, of which two are from the big island of Hawai‘i, four pieces from Tonga, and one sample of lace bark from Jamaica. In the catalogue, Tahiti is referred to as Otaheite, the Hawaiian Islands were known under the name of Sandwich Islands, of which the large island of Hawai‘i was called “Owyhee” and the Tongan islands had received the name of the Friendly Islands during Cook’s second voyage. The main island of Tongatapu was called New Amsterdam by the Dutch voyager Abel Tasman in 1643. Even though the catalogue is numbered, the absence of numbers on the barkcloth samples, renumbering at a later date, or missing pieces, sometimes make it difficult to identify the provenance of the barkcloth samples. Many of the Shaw books have more than thirty-nine specimens, some have fewer pieces, which makes every single book a unique individual collection. However, Maryanne Larkin (2004) believes only three versions were made of the book, which means that each of them should fit one of the three “types.”4 She does not further specify in what these versions differ from one another. The Tahitian samples (ahu) are plain with a very finely grooved texture. Some have red printed semicircles. Hawaiian samples (kapa) show the greatest variety: they are plain, heavily grooved, have a fishnet texture, a plain color, or are decorated with complex patterns in red, black, and yellow. Tongan barkcloth is represented by both black barkcloth (ngatu ‘uli) or barkcloth with an intricate rubbed brown pattern (ngatu tāhina) (Figure 3.1). The great similarity between

Pole, Doyal and Burkinshaw (2004: 52) mention an example that has been in the hands of a Devon (UK) family since 1886. 4 The Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (MAA 1976.1591) (Kaeppler 1978: 117) and National Library of Australia in Canberra (Gall 2011: 26) hold volumes that have been characterized as pre-Shaw in which Alexander Shaw was testing the ground to see whether a barkcloth book could be of interest (Veys 2014). 3

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Figure 3.1  A sample of Tongan barkcloth from a Shaw book. Mitchell Library DSM/C 525, © State Library of New South Wales.

many of the samples in the different books suggests that they were cut from the same piece. Cutting up of barkcloth pieces often happened in eighteenthand nineteenth-century Europe and allowed people of that time to get a quick impression of barkcloth patterns. There are four Tongan barkcloth samples described: Specimen 1. From New Amsterdam [Tongatapu]; and made to resist rain, by being smeared over with the juice of a glutenous herb or plant, before described.5 33. From New Amsterdam, wore [sic] by the common people; no rain will penetrate it. 35. From the Friendly islands [Tonga], and presented to Mr. King, the colours the same as before described. 37. From New Amsterdam; common but very durable (Shaw 1787: 78). According to Shaw, three of the four Tongan barkcloth samples were obtained in Tongatapu. These samples would thus originate from Cook’s third voyage, since Tongatapu was not visited on his previous voyages. Shaw claims that

Shaw refers here to the preceding accounts by William Anderson and Johann Reinhold Forster.

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the fourth piece was given to “Mr. King.” There were no Kings traveling on the second voyage, while there were two on the third voyage. Both bore the name James King and sailed on the Resolution. More is known about the “James King” who was born in 1750, had studied science in Oxford and Paris, and died in 1784. He was the second lieutenant per commission and became first lieutenant on February 15, 1779, after Captain Clerke’s death (Beaglehole 1967: 1462; Salmond 2003: 304). Shaw is most probably referring to this man who clearly occupied a high position during the voyage. In addition, the early date, 1787, of the published books is substantive evidence to assume the samples were indeed collected during Cook’s voyages. One of the sources of the Shaw samples is believed to be the sale of Cook’s voyage items in 1781 by David Samwell (Kaeppler 1978a: 48). During Cook’s third voyage, Samwell served as surgeon’s mate on the Resolution from February 1776 until August 1778, when he was transferred to the Discovery as a surgeon, replacing William Anderson, who had died during the voyage. Samwell, as well as Anderson, made extensive collections during the voyage and both men kept detailed written journals. At the time of the Samwell’s sale, the alleged Alexander Shaw was serving in the Royal American Regiment of Foot as an ensign contributing to fighting the French during the American War of Independence. Shaw might therefore have acquired the pieces from the London dealer and collector George Humphrey who purchased artifacts at the Samwell sale in 1781 (Kaeppler 1978a: 92, 245, 2011: 83). The natural historians Reinhold and George Forster might also be possible sources for the samples as they might have sold some items of their collection through Humphrey (Kaeppler 1978a: 44–45). While Samwell and the Forsters are options, I believe that Shaw (1787: 6)—in his awkwardly worded phrase of the introduction where it is unclear what he refers to6—might want to make explicit that both the South Seas and the Jamaican lace bark pieces were obtained from the Duchess of Portland sale. This is in contrast to Len Pole, Sherry Doyal and Jane Burkinshaw (2004: 52), and Roland Kaehr (2000: 221) who affirm that Alexander Shaw acquired only the Jamaican lace bark samples from that sale. Britain’s wealthiest woman, Margaret Cavendish Bentick, Duchess of Portland (1715–1785), had assembled—to the great disgust of her family (Wheatley and Cunningham 1891: 126)—a carefully curated collection in her house at Privy Garden,7 which was eventually sold between

“I have some fine specimens of the latter [perhaps both ‘the paper-mulberry of the South Sea, and the lace-trees of Jamaica’], bought at the Duchess of Portland’s sale, and added to this description of cloth” (Shaw 1787: 6). 7 Privy Garden pertained to the King’s Palace at Whitehall. The Dukes of Portland had been granted a house there by William III which was part of the King’s Palace (Wheatley and Cunningham 1891: 125–126). 6

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April 24 and July 3, 1786. Her collection consisted largely of natural specimens, but also included ethnographic artifacts and had been partly amassed through the agency of her Swedish botanist employee Daniel Solander (1733–1782) (Gilbert 1967: 456). Under the heading “Artificial Curiosities. From America, China, and the newly-discovered Islands in the South Seas” (Skinner [1786]: 58–59), the catalogue from the sale lists as part of lot 1372 “a matted pocket, containing specimens of the body linen made of bark, of Oeerea, Queen of Otaheite, with some of her Majesty’s hair, braided by herself, a roll of a like plaited hair, and 2 ornaments for the ears, composed of 6 pearls, from Otaheite”; lot 1376 “Three large and various small specimens of cloth, made of the bark of the cloth tree, some of them curiously stained in a variety of figures, from Otaheite, O-why-hee! and other South Sea Islands”; lot 1377 “Two large pieces of fine bark cloth, from the Society Isles”; and finally lot 1378 “Various specimens of the inner bark of the Lagetto tree (similar to the bark of the cloth tree of the South Sea Islands).” It is surmised that by 1786 Alexander Shaw had returned to the British Isles. Going through the sales catalogue, no trace is found of Shaw buying barkcloth. However, the Duchess of Portland sale catalogue does reveal that Shaw displayed an interest in Artificial Curiosities. He is shown on the thirteenth day of the sale, Monday 8th of May 1786, to have bought two lots: 1370 “A large wicker basket from Otaheite, a vessel made of calabash, curiously ornamented by burning from Cayenne, and a large deep wooden tray of Indian workmanship”; and 1375 “A fiddle-shaped patapatoo [short club], and a water-scoop, both singularly carved, 3 wooden instruments used in making cloth, and a curious wooden box, all from New Zealand.” Shaw’s main interest, however, seems to have been in naturalia, as he acquired numerous shells, plants, and corals (Skinner [1786]). Even though he apparently claims having bought lace bark at the Duchess of Portland sale, it appears more probable that he acquired it when he was based in Jamaica. It is likely that by linking the origin of his barkcloth collection to an at that time highly respected and influential person, he has tried to increase the value of his sample books. The Alexander Shaw books offer a unique insight in the collecting and assembling of barkcloths into portable books. While it is clear that Alexander Shaw was fascinated by those cloths, many questions remain. Where did his fascination come from? How can the existence of the different versions of the books be explained? Both the material evidence and the textual documentation suggest a third voyage source for the books. In eighteenth-century Enlightenment Europe, the tension heightened between the growing importance of material evidence and the role of the printed word that increasingly facilitated production and distribution of knowledge. Texts lacked the concrete authority of what is empirically observable, of what can be experienced by the senses. Contrary to the objects, the texts represented no knowledge in se, but were as images, mimetic representations of knowledge. Alexander Shaw

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fuses the power of books—channels of massive dissemination of ideas—and the carriers of authoritative knowledge, that is, the material objects. However, Shaw seems to have been aware that in opposition to the texts, the samples of barkcloth alone were not enough. They needed an explanation through ordening, classification, and textual information concerning the geographical and collecting context. Actually, Shaw’s barkcloth books touch simultaneously on two aspects: the text linked to objects was considered an instrument of distribution of knowledge while at the same time both separate were source materials from which knowledge could and still can be extracted. The places where the Shaw books are kept—in ethnographic museums, in libraries, or in archives—show the ambivalent position that these books still hold today. Moreover, the insertion of barkcloths in a printed book, the portable format par excellence, rendered the circulation of barkcloth much easier. Similarly to nineteenth-century photographs, the barkcloth books became “fragments of reality whose miniaturization allowed the viewer to enjoy a personal, embodied relationship with them, staring, stroking, folding, tearing, overwriting and owning” (Lydon 2005: 6). Barkcloth books were not simply a case of pieces of Polynesian material culture being carried over into a Western context, but the juxtaposition of text and artifact fitted into Enlightenment thought. The Shaw books embody the tension that existed between knowledge acquired through the written word and that obtained through sensory experience of the world, or in short the friction between text and artifact.

The “Spanish Lake” Cook’s voyages were certainly the most prolific in terms of number of pieces that were collected. Despite the later eighteenth-century voyages that were carried out with a collecting program or where explicit mention is made of offerings of barkcloth, only two non-Cook barkcloths have survived. The most spectacular piece was collected during the voyage of Alejandro Malaspina. Alarmed by the increasing number of incursions in the Pacific, the “natural” backyard of the Spanish Empire in the American continent, the Spaniards increased their presence in the “Spanish Lake.” Alejandro Malaspina undertook one of these voyages. His world expedition (1789–1794) was an undertaking of the Marina española (Spanish Navy) (Higueras 1984: 46–47). The objectives were diverse, ranging from hydrographical and astronomical research like cartographic measurements, determining latitude and longitude to other calculations proper to the astronomical navigation. The indigenous lay of the land and customs, demography, commerce, production, political and economical state of affairs, fauna and flora would be examined as well (del Pino Díaz 1984: 70). The expedition commanded by Alejandro Malaspina and José de Bustamente

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y Guerra set out with two ships, the Descubierta and Atrevida, on a five-year journey. The crew visited the northern island of Vava‘u for eleven days, from May 20 to July 1, 1793. As Malaspina prepared the publication of the findings of his voyage, an intrigue at the Spanish court resulted in his incarceration. All the documents sent to Spain during his travels as well as the objects gathered were locked up and kept in the Museo Naval de Madrid (Maritime Museum of Madrid) (Higueras 1984: 47). Until recently, little attention had been paid to the objects collected during Malaspina’s voyage. Higueras (1984: 49) states that the Minister of Public Education asked as early as 1869 the Director of the Museum of Natural History of Madrid to set up a commission to examine the boxes of objects sent by Malaspina. The idea was that those objects had to be transferred to the Archaeological Museum. However Sanchez Garrido (1999) reports that part of the objects was transferred to the Museo de América, while other objects are now in the Jardín Botánico (Botanical Garden) in Madrid (Sanchez Garrido 1999). Reading the journals, it is very difficult to discern an active collecting policy as they very rarely give accounts on Tongan objects being collected by or given to the sailors. Instead the writing focuses on the exchange of trinkets for victuals. On May 24, 1793, a fine mat, which Malaspina refers to as a “grass mat” was exchanged for a nail (David et al. 2004: 126). The trajectories of the Malaspina objects are still unclear and need more research. In contrast to this, correspondence, hydrographical and astronomical works, diaries of sea and land, compilations and pictorial material have received far more attention. Even though with the opening of the current building of the Museo de América in 1965, the Tongan ngatu occupied a central position on the ground floor among other objects brought back from exhibitions, the barkcloth was no longer on display by 1993. During a thematic redisplay the choice had by then been made to focus on the Americas (Cabello 1993: 18). Fortunately, thanks to the efforts of the curating and restoration team, the Malaspina barkcloth has now been fully examined and restored where necessary (personal communication Beatriz Robledo 2012–2015). Malaspina made only one reference to barkcloth in his writings: “To that same fear we had to attribute shortly after the new gift that was given to us consisting of the deployment of a long carpet from the shore to the kava house, in which, just as in previous days, were already gathered the usual women over whom presided amid them Paulaho’s daughter, the wife of Vuna” (Malaspina and de Bustamante y Guerra 1885: 271).8 The diary of the Argentinian Francisco Xavier de Viana, a

Translated by the author from Spanish: “A este mismo temor debimos atribuir poco después el nuevo obsequio que se nos hizo de desplegar una larga alfombra desde la orilla hasta la casa del cava, en la cual, del mismo modo que en los días anteriores, estaban ya unidas las mujeres acostumbradas, señoreándose entre ellas la hija de Paulajo, mujer de Vuna” (Malaspina and de Bustamante y Guerra 1885: 271).

8

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writer and reporter aboard the Descubierta, who had disembarked at Montevideo (Uruguay), was first published by his children in 1849 in Uruguay (Cutter 2001: 75–80; Langdon 1977: 61; Palau, Zabala, and Sáez 1984: 611) and uses almost the exact same phrasing as Malaspina, which would suggest that they either wrote together or that one copied from the other.9 Working together was not uncommon as is obvious from Malaspina’s journal where he uses Bustamente’s narrative for May 27 and 28, when a party travels to Neiafu to the residence of the high priest (David et al. 2004: 132–142). When Malaspina and de Viana talk about people’s clothing, it is always in relation to women. They however never specify the material, designs, or style in which those women are dressed. For example: “While modesty and shyness constrained them somewhat at the beginning, as did their concern for the proper arrangement of their costume, they could not repress their instinctive desire to please”10 (David et al. 2004: 129). Another example is found in the description of the unexpected visit also around May 27 and 28 of Malaspina’s men to two chiefly women, Paulaho’s widow and “Tagacala’s” wife: “They were taken unawares by our unexpected and formal visit, but Tupou composed herself and arranged her clothing with all the decorum that a respectable woman owes her visitors”11 (David et al. 2004: 141).

Lost collections? Eighteenth-century voyages by the English, the French, and the Spanish were manifold, but barkcloth was not necessarily collected nor did it survive. For example, the Spaniard Francisco Antonio Mourelle de la Rua12 aboard the frigate La Princesa explained how several objects, including barkcloth, were given to him in the presently uninhabited volcanic island of Late on February 27, 1781. The presentation was accompanied by song and dance: “The Indians [the inhabitants of the Tongan island of Late], full of confidence in us, came on board: the one who had authority over the rest expressed the tenderest friendship for us; he danced upon the deck, and sang several songs:

Text given by de Viana: “A este mismo temor debimos atribuir poco después el nuevo obsequio que se nos hizo de desplegar una larga alfombra desde la orilla hasta la casa en donde beben la cava, en la cual del mismo modo que en los días anteriores estaban ya unidas las mugeres [sic], entre quienes se señoreaba la hija de Paulajo, muger [sic] de Buna [sic]” (de Viana 1849: 280). 10 Original text: “Al paso que la modestia y el pudor las contenían algún tanto al principio y que atentas á [sic] la mejor compostura de sus trajes no desmentían el intento de agradar, ….” (Malaspina and de Bustamante y Guerra 1885: 272) 11 Original text: “Nuestra introducción produjo la sorpresa de una visita inesperada y de ceremonia; pero la Dubou compuso su semblante y su vestido como podía hacerlo la mujer más celosa de la decencia y del decoro debido á [sic] los que la visitan” (Malaspina and de Bustamante y Guerra 1885: 278). 12 Both Francisco Antonio Maurelle and Mourelle are used. 9

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among other presents, he gave me sort of large counterpane, resembling blotting paper, but composed of two or three kinds of leaves, interwoven one upon the other, so as to give more strength to the composition” (Maurelle 1798: 369). Mourelle de la Rua (1798: 371) mentions that a few days later on March 5, 1781, barkcloth and mats were offered to him. It is not known whether any of these barkcloths have survived. The fate of the collection of the next European visitor to Tonga, Jean-François de Galaup de la Pérouse, is clearer. With his two ships Boussole and Astrolabe, he surveyed Vava‘u, Late, Kao, Tofoa, Honga Tonga, Tongatapu, and ‘Ata (south of Tongatapu) from late December 1787 to early January 1788 (Buck 1953: 54). Unfortunately, some time in June 1788 a cyclone struck the vessels, which drove them against the reefs surrounding the island of Vanikoro in the Santa Cruz Group. The many drawings and most of the natural history and other collections—which might have contained barkcloth specimens—went down with the two ships (Dunmore 1991: 153–154). Some objects did survive as the merchant-explorer Peter Dillon shipped back logbooks and collections he had received in consignment before the accident (Daugeron 2011: 69). Misfortune continued for the European voyagers. In 1789, from April 23 till April 27, William Bligh in the Bounty was the first British voyager after James Cook to visit the Tongan islands of Nomuka, Koa, and Tofoa in the Ha‘apai group (Buck 1953: 36–38). Captain Bligh’s main objective was to collect breadfruit plants in the hope of providing an acceptable and cheap diet for slaves in the West Indies. However, when the Bounty was sailing on a north-westerly course from Nomuka and was approximately equidistant from Kotu and Tofua, mutiny led by Fletcher Christian broke out. Bligh was set adrift together with eighteen loyal crew members and headed for Tofua rather than Kotu because Tofua was downwind. They continued their voyage to Timor in Indonesia. Bligh’s diary published in 1792 does not mention barkcloth (Dunmore 1991: 29). It is unlikely any barkcloth was acquired by Bligh or by Fletcher Christian and the other mutineers. Two years later, adversity continues for Tonga-bound explorers. Edward Edwards visited several of the Tongan islands in HMS Pandora, between June 18 and July 26, 1791. The ship had been sent out to bring the mutineers of the Bounty back to justice. Among the islands visited were Nomuka, Tofua, Kao, Vava‘u, Ata, ‘Eua, Tongatapu, and Niuafo‘ou. On August 28, the Pandora struck the shallows of the Great Barrier Reef while looking for a passage through the Endeavour Straits. Four mutineers and thirty-one members of the crew died when the ship sank. Barkcloth was not referred to in the accounts13 of Edward

The logbook of the Pandora was found in 1965 after having been lost for 170 years. It had apparently been in the possession of Edward Edwards’s descendants (Langdon 1965: 33).

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Edwards, the captain, George Hamilton (1915), the surgeon, and that of David Thomas Renouard (1964), the commander of the tender Matavi, sent out to look for the Pandora. Renouard reached Fonualei on July 22 and stayed till July 25, 1791. It is not known whether any barkcloths were collected and brought back from these trips. Another voyage suffering mishaps was led by the Frenchman Bruni d’Entrecasteaux, who was selected to command an expedition in search of the long overdue ships of de Galaup de la Pérouse. With the fregats Recherche and Espérance he visited Tongatapu where he stayed from March 24 till April 10, 1793 (Buck 1953: 56–59; Dunmore 1991: 97–98). The story of this voyage is better known through the accounts of Houtou de Labillardière, the natural scientist on this expedition. Some objects collected during this voyage are now in the Bergen Museum in Norway, the National Museum of World Cultures in the Netherlands (Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam; and Museum Volkenkunde, Leiden), the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Dunkerque (Dunkirk), France, the Peabody Harvard Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, and possibly in the Musée du quai Branly in Paris, France. Recent research has revealed that the Dunkerque museum holds a white barkcloth collected by Ange-Marie-Aimé Raoul, who served as second pilot on the Recherche (Douglas, Lythberg, and Veys 2017). After an insurrectionary voyage, William Bligh undertook a second expedition as captain of the Providence and the Assistant. Tonga, including Vava‘u, Late, Fonualei, and Tofua, was again sighted from August 3 to 4, 1792. His account makes no reference to barkcloth nor is it known whether any was collected (Bligh 1920). Dumont d’Urville’s first voyage was exceptional for the early nineteenth century because he stayed in Tongatapu for one month from April 20 to May 21, 1827. The second time he went to Tonga, he only stayed for eight days from October 4 to 12, 1837. Dumont d’Urville’s voyages produced good pictorial material showing people wearing herringbone patterned barkcloth in a house setting, displaying the tattooed thigh of a man wearing decorated ngatu14 (Figure  3.2) and depicting a warrior with a white barkcloth turban and wrap-around skirt. Claude Stéfani, chief curator of the Musées municipaux de Rochefort, brought to my attention three barkcloths collected by Pierre-Adolphe Lesson (1805–1888), medical doctor and botanist on the Astrolabe, during Dumont d’Urville’s first voyage to Tonga (Plate 9).

This image is usually portrayed as the only surviving depiction of Tongan tattooing. However, as was discussed earlier, the Gilsemans drawing made during Abel Tasman’s expedition (Figure 1.3) shows 1643 tattooing and Juan Ravenet, the draughtsman on Malaspina’s voyage depicts the tattoos of the young man Latu in 1793.

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Figure 3.2  Decorated barkcloth worn by a man displaying his tattooed thigh (Dumont d’Urville 1833: planche 76). Leiden University Library, [M 3b 43, Atlas dl 1].

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Decreasing interest Despite a drop in explorers visiting Tonga from 1800 onward, exploring voyages still had well-developed programs of object collecting. This decrease in visitors to Tonga had been “predicted” by Bruni d’Entrecasteaux in 1793 when he accounted that Tonga and more specifically Tongatapu would not be an attractive place in the future for Europeans to visit because of the lack of fresh water. The US Exploring Expedition illustrates the decreasing interest shown in Tonga: it stopped in Tonga for only five days from May 1 to 5, 1840, while Samoa was explored for two months in 1839–1840 and Fiji for three in 1840 (Wilkes 1845). Kaeppler (2002: 295) claims the US Exploring Expedition (1838–1842) made the largest collection of Tongan barkcloth.15 It must be noted that the first Catalogue of the collected items—compiled in the 1840s by Titian Ramsay Peale and Charles Pickering, scientists of the Expedition—mentioned the acquisition of only one Tongan piece of barkcloth which unfortunately has been reported missing from the National Museum of Natural History in Washington D.C.16 since 1985. This one ngatu is in stark contrast with the twelve Tongan clubs collected.

Beachcombers, merchants, and whalers The word “beachcombers” is used solely in a Pacific context (Maude 1968: 134– 138). It encapsulates the term “beach” which is “a space of transformation,” “a space of crossings,” a liminal space in which two worlds—the land and the sea— and two social orders—the Western and the Pacific—intersect (Dening 2004: 16–19). Beachcombers, increasingly recurrent in the early nineteenth century with the opening up of whaling and trade routes and the permanent Western presence in New South Wales (Australia), were of European or American origin, but had been abandoned by their captains, suffered shipwreck, or had deserted.

The majority of objects collected during the US Exploring Expedition (1838–1842) are in the Smithsonian Institution (Walsh 2004). 16 The US Expedition of 1838–1842 had collected a great quantity of objects. Spencer Baird, following James Smithson’s original mandate to increase and diffuse knowledge, started in 1859 to give away sets of US Exploring Expedition objects, which he viewed as “duplicates.” Despite the fact that these artifacts are indeed some of the earliest and most important in the Smithsonian collection, more than 500 of the original 2,500 artifacts were given away. Continuing this trend, in 1867, Baird had twenty-five US Exploring Expedition museum starter kits made up and sent them to State collections of natural history, colleges, and universities in the United States, Canada, and Europe. Unfortunately, some exchanged objects met with disaster during the nineteenth century. For example, a set sent to Amherst College and one to the University of Toronto disappeared when the buildings in which they were housed burnt down. One of the largest collections of US Exploring Expedition material, more than fifty artifacts, went to the Chicago Academy of Science in 1867, and was consumed in the great Chicago fire in 1872 (Walsh 2004). 15

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Hence beachcombers are foreigners in their new societies, but also ill-adapted in the societies they came from. In short they were “as varied as humanity itself, and as good and as evil” (Dening 2004: 17). Those men17 were dependent on the native village that was willing to host them and if they were “adopted” by a local chief, they might manage to survive in their new environment. Beachcombers often mediated between visiting captains and local chiefs. European skills such as carpentry, blacksmithing, and musket maintenance were seen as a valuable contribution to the local community (Dening 2004: 17–18; Fischer 2002: 111– 112; Oliver 1989: 53–54). To camouflage their different physical appearance they were often tattooed. They moreover married into chiefly families, thereby overtly rejecting the values of their home cultures (Lamb, Smith, and Thomas 2000: 121). The Irishman Bryan Morgan and the two Englishmen Benjamin Ambler and John Connolly were the first white men to settle in Tonga. These convicts managed to escape from Port Jackson, the 1788 established penal colony in New South Wales (Australia). They found in 1796 a place on the American merchant ship Otter captained by Ebenezer Dorr (Langdon 1977: 62). The Pacific historian Gunson (1977: 96) characterizes Bryan as the most prototypical beachcomber “skilled in the use of iron tools and weapons but otherwise deficient in communicating the advantages of western civilisation.” Conelly was taken under the protection of Fatafehi, the Tu‘i Tonga or paramount chief, while Ambler married the daughters of the chief in command of the fleet of Tuku‘aho, the hau or “working king” (Gunson 1977: 96). To meet Tongan appetite for foreign weapons and people to operate them, the Duke of Portland in 1802 and the Union in 1804 were attacked on the shores of Tongatapu (Campbell 2001: 68). Two American women, Elizabeth Morey with her black maid Eliza,18 survived the attack of the Duke of Portland. Elizabeth was made to marry Teukava of Kolovai (Map 3), but tried to escape on the Union (Hughes 1999). The most significant arrival of the early 1800s was the English ship Port-au-Prince, which was attacked on December 1, 1806, in Lifuka (Ha‘apai group). Most of the crew were killed, but William Mariner, a fourteenyear-old captain’s clerk, survived together with James Waters, Nicholas Blake, William Brown, Thomas Eversfield, George Wood, William Singleton, Alexander Macay, the black boy John Roberts, and the part Hawaiian child of William

Elizabeth Morey (1780–1805) has been described as the first woman beachcomber. She was given the Tongan name Lolohea (Hughes 1999: 49). Treated as a high-ranking Tongan woman, her union with Teukava produced two sons, Mo‘ungatea and Taukei‘aho born in 1803 and 1804 and one daughter born in 1805 (Hughes 1999: 50). It is believed that Elizabeth Morey died some time in 1805 soon after giving birth to her daughter. Both their remains and those of her grandsons Simaima and Siosifa ‘Uluakihi‘atu might rest at a grave in Ha‘atafu (Hughes 1999: 54–55). 18 It is unclear what ultimately happened to Elizabeth Morey’s maid Eliza.

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Stevenson. Mariner was adopted by one of the wives of ‘Ulukālala-‘i-Feletoa (Fīnau ‘Ulukālala II) and spent four years in Tonga during which he assisted Fīnau in extending his power throughout Tonga (Dale 2008: 268). When his protector died in 1809, Mariner became a protégé of the deceased’s son Moengāngongo, with whom he enjoyed a privileged life. William Mariner was finally picked up by the brig Favourite, which took him to Macao from where he continued his voyage to London aboard an East India merchant arriving in June 1811. John Martin, a London doctor, who became fascinated with William Mariner’s story when he met him a few years after his return to England, composed the narrative for him (Smith 2000b: 193–194). William Brown, another survivor of the Port-au-Prince, became a valued servant of the Fīnau family. Together with William Singleton, also from the Port-au-Prince, they were the official scribes of chiefs, teaching them to read and write. In so doing, the two beachcombers also transmitted some basic knowledge of the Christian religion, for the only book they had was the Bible (Douaire-Marsaudon 2009: 166). Because of the beachcombers’ close association with the local chiefs, they were often viewed with suspicion by the visiting Westerners. They were first loyal to local chiefs and they favored individual traders or visitors of their choice. Therefore, when the captain and some of the crew of the whaler Elizabeth (Table A.1) were murdered at Neiafu in Vava‘u in 1823, it was assumed that Brown was responsible for this, since he was closely associated with Fīnau. William Brown was immediately clapped in irons and taken to Ha‘apai where he was rescued by the merchant-explorer Peter Dillon in 1827 (Table A.1). Little to nothing is known about the collecting practices of beachcombers as very few returned to Europe. Dening (2004: 18) argues that wise beachcombers did not take any possessions with them because those would inevitably be taken and if they resisted too much they risked being killed by rogues. When beachcombers did go back, they came enriched with tales, which fed the European appetite for stories of adventure. Moreover, as their return was often a chance opportunity, they probably did not have the time to organize a shipment of objects they collected except for the things they were carrying on their bodies such as tattoos. No matter in which of the Tongan islands beachcombers lived, they always had access to Tongan barkcloth, which reached Ha‘apai through exchange networks and was produced in Tongatapu and Vava‘u (Mariner 1827: vol. 1, 154). Eventually, the beachcomber disappeared rather suddenly and was replaced by the mercantile middleman. By the acquisition of island property, the merchants gained power in local affairs. Nevertheless they soon realized they needed an influx of capital, goods, and more European and American permanent settlers in order to inflate their profits through an increased international trade. Ultimately, those merchants had to hand over their monopoly to company representatives (Fischer 2002: 112). With the arrival of the first mercantile ship Otter in 1796,

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Tonga could have obtained the enviable trade position Hawai‘i and Tahiti enjoyed but the outbreaks of fighting as part of what Campbell (2001: 59–71) has termed “The Long Civil War,” which had started in 1777 and lasted until 1820, prevented this. In the Pacific, whaling developed into a real industry from 1820 until 1860 supplementing the North Atlantic as demands for whale oil, used in European cities as the lighting oil and most applicable industrial lubricant in America and Europe, were soaring (Fischer 2002: 101). The whaling industry brought about the foundation of new foreign settlements. Tonga never developed into the major whaling port that neighboring ‘Uvea and Rotuma were by the 1830s (Fischer 2002: 101; Oliver 1989: 50–51). Yet, objects collected by whalers are known to have been brought back and are presently in several museums in New England and Long Island (USA) (Richards and Richards 2000). The relationship of beachcombers and especially whalers with the Tongans was often violent. It might be another reason for the absence of any known barkcloth being acquired by either two groups. Gunson (1990a: 15) claims that although not all the circumstances of these early 1820s violent incidents, where Tongans were taking ships’ captains and crew as hostages, are known, most of them had no profound impact on Tongan culture and society. It rather affected Tonga’s relationship with outsiders: Tonga became known as an unfriendly area that had to be visited with the greatest caution. The demand for firearms was closely linked with the adoption of the ransom technique (Gunson 1990a: 15). However, there were also violent incidents where no ransom was demanded. In Tonga the Ceres was cut off at Lifuka in 1822 and part of her crew massacred, while the Rambler and the Elizabeth were attacked at Vava‘u in 1823. Captain Powell of the Rambler was killed when abusing Tongan hospitality by firing on Neiafu because Fīnau refused to give up runaways even though muskets, flint, and gunpowder were offered. The braining and drowning of the crew of the whaler Sarah by a chief of ‘Eua after he had fed them for six weeks was probably also a case of hospitality abuse (Gunson 1990a: 16). These violent incidents made that travelers to Tonga did not refer to the Tongans and the objects they produced, but rather to the events that characterized that place. William Dalton (1990: 78–81) who was traveling on the whaler Phoenix described the sighting of Vava‘u on Monday September 6, 1824, as follows: “In the evening passed Vavaooa [Vava‘u] Island where Captain Powell of the English Ship Rambler was unfortunately killed by the natives: Also the Captain and some of the crew of the English Ship Elizabeth.” A few months later on November 21 and 22, 1824, Dalton (1990: 86–89) visited Tongatapu and still insisted on the haphazard situation in the Tongan Islands: “It is not safe to land, the natives made a practice of tying Captains of Ships to a tree, and detaining them until they ransom themselves. Several Captains & their boats crews [sic] have been killed by the natives of the Friendly Islands.”

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Sticking to the metaphor of the beach, we might conclude that beachcombers and to a lesser extent whalers were too engulfed in the process of crossing the “beach,” of being “good actors and mimics” who have to bridge the gap between different worlds (Dening 2004: 18). So, in order to survive, they could not halt the flow of events by capturing their new place in barkcloth.

Missionaries This section is concerned with how and why missionaries collected. The few studies looking at the collecting practices of missionaries portray it as an activity aimed at gathering trophies (Shaw 2011), showing evidence of progress of conversion in the homeland (Hooper 2006: 48–75; Wingfield 2012: 97–128) or performing a kind of iconoclasm (Hooper 2008). While these studies might lead to believe that the early missionaries—only Protestants are discussed in those ways—had a clear idea and a set program of what they wanted to collect from the moment they set foot on Tongan grounds, I want to nuance this image. Objects came in the hands of Wesleyan Protestant and Marist Catholic missionaries through a complex interplay of local social and political forces. Missionaries had to come up with strategies that would give meaning to and recontextualize these new holdings. Missionary collecting was a haphazard activity shaping missionaries’ thinking about what they were in Tonga for and at the same time shaping their discourses about their perceived successes or failures. In the first six months of 1830, many Tongan figurines became the possession of Wesleyan missionaries. Reverend John Thomas, a Wesleyan Missionary Society (WMS) missionary in Tonga from 1826 to 1859, at the time based in Lifuka, Ha‘apai, was one of the main players influencing the recently converted King Tāufa‘āhau who is known to have gone about burning god’s houses and surrendering images to missionaries (Campbell 2001: 76–77; Neich 2007: 232). The Wesleyan missionary John Thomas (1830b), for example, held an ambivalent position toward wooden sculptures: he respected them for their age but at the same time condemned them for the paganism he felt they represented. He saw god images as idols, the objectification of the old religion, functioning at the center of ritual activities. The anthropologist and historian Nicholas Thomas (1991: 152) asserts that it particularly suited the missionary discourse when the local religion could be characterized as idolatry. I would like to add a subtle but important difference in this assertion. Protestant missionaries in particular were helped by the notion of idolatry, because throughout the history of the establishment of Protestant Churches in Europe—the Reformation, which started in the sixteenth century—“tools” to deal with idolatry had been developed. They resulted in either the organized removal of idolatrous Catholic Saint’s images to the riotous damaging or complete destruction of these unwanted images

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(Wallace 2004: 83, 94, 106; Wingfield 2012: 225–226). Catholic missionaries on the other hand took an antithetical stance toward Tonga’s people in general, exemplified by Father Grange’s statement in 1843: “The natives of Tonga are not idolatrous at all; only the spirits receive their adorations and just like the heathens of the Old World, they utter about them thousands of absurd stories.”19 Moreover, Catholic missionaries were far more experienced converters, having polished their methods over the centuries resulting in attempting to participate as much as possible in traditional life and encourage those aspects that could be reconciled with Catholic dogma (Duriez-Toutain 1995: 40). Catholic missionaries are known for integrating diverse practices into the Catholic liturgy. Sending objects to England or to France and displaying them there was a way of showing the triumph of the “true religion” over the Tongan religion. They were a mechanism through which the fact of conversion could be materially expressed. Thomas (1991: 153) states, “The ancestor or deity images which were described as ‘idols’ also served the useful purpose of exhibiting the absurdity of pagan ideas.” Even though Protestant missionaries employed the words “idol” and “idolatrous,” Thomas (1991: 156) argues that in Western Polynesia religion was not regarded as idolatrous; artifacts which materially condensed the beliefs, practices, and objects of “heathen” worship were thus not as available for appropriation and depiction as in other parts of Polynesia. It is true that in contrast to the well-known story of Pōmare II,20 the recently converted Tahitian chief giving away his family “idols” with the message that the missionaries can either burn them or send home for all Europeans to quench their curiosity and get acquainted with the inapt gods of Tahiti, Tonga had fewer references to godimages or objects encapsulating the old religion being surrendered (Thomas 2010: 104; Wood 1938: 27). Clubs sometimes had this role. For example, the WMS missionary John Thomas (1831b) recorded in 1831 in Lifuka receiving a club: “he [a respectable matāpule from the village of Ahau] sent for his club called ‘Hala,’ that is the way or road and gave it to me testifying his ascent to the truth of God and that he cast away his spirit on the devil who had hitherto guided him for the club he gave me was that by which he used to devine, it was the road for the spirit.” More than ten years later, objects materializing the old religion were still given away. Another instance is King George Tupou I who presented John Thomas (1843) on November 18, 1843, with a club: “Today the King called and gave me a beautiful, carved club, called Hikuleo, this he said was the god worshipped

Author’s translation from French: Les naturels de Tonga ne sont point idolâtres; les esprits seuls reçoivent leurs adorations et comme les païens de l’Ancien Monde, ils débitent à leur sujet mille contes absurdes (Father Grange cited in Duriez-Toutain 1995: 38). 20 Pōmare II asked to be baptized on July 18, 1812 (Newell 2010: 127).

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at Uiha, one of the principal of the Haabai Islands [Ha‘apai Islands] from which place he said it had been sent to him. Hikuleo is the devil [?] name.” Mats and whales teeth too were considered as embodying the old gods and were given away for that reason. James Watkin (1832) explained in his diary entry of October 1, 1832, how a fight broke out between two neighboring villages because a recently converted chief named Lagi [Langi] had instructed a young man to bring “the things he used to worship, that they might be put to a useful purpose, the Whales teeth made into some articles of use and the Mats used as dresses. For [they] were thy God O Tonga!.” Interestingly, barkcloth, despite often used for wrapping god images (Neich 2007: 256), does not figure in the class of objects connected to the gods. Marist missionaries had received precise instructions from their superiors prior to leaving. The list of objects they should collect included weapons, textiles, shells, plants, and seeds to be sent to the headquarters in Lyon in order for them to be displayed in the museum set up by the Oeuvre de la Propagation de la Foi. In so doing, the collection strategy was part and parcel to the evangelization strategy of Marist missionaries. However, Zerbini (2011: 13) argues that these collections were at first not conceived in museological terms, but were rather conceived as evidence of missionary progress while at the same time illustrating what kind of magical and extraordinary beliefs the missionaries were combatting. Father Arche was the first of the Marist missionaries to dispatch items to France. They would take two years to reach their destination. Brother Paschase (Jean Saint-Martin) who was based in ‘Uvea before becoming a Marist missionary in Tonga in 1850 listed, in one of his letters to Brother François dated September 30, 1847, objects he was sending back to France: I am sending you some curios which will please you, my dear brother: two finished mats, three clubs, one from Fiji, two ipu or coconut cups, some shells from the Strait of Magellan, a garland of combs used to decorate the altar of Holy Thursday, two shell necklaces, some tapa, the local fabric, a kupesi, the pattern used for printing the fabric, and a bowl for the Father superior which belonged to the old Ekivalu (the old tiger) of the island, who died recently, a basket, and two mollek. (Clisby 1993–2001: 197)21 Brother Paschase not only sent objects, but also initiated their listing. Clisby (1993–2001: 195) believes these objects were possibly displayed at the entrance of the Superior’s office at the Hermitage, set on a piece of land that Abbot Marcillin Champagnat and abbot Jean-Claude Courveille had bought in May 1824 near Saint-Chamond to establish the headquarters and the noviciate of the Clisby (1993–2001: 197), translator and compiler of the letters, mentions that he does not know what “mollek” means.

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Marist Society (Coste 1965). However, it seems more likely that the objects were actually given to the Musée de l’Oeuvre de la Propagation de la Foi (Museum of the Work of the Propagation of Faith) established in 1822 in Lyon to aid all Catholic missions (Lolom 2011: 9; Stéfani 2000: 12). Most of the collection is now in Lyon in the Musée des Confluences. The celebration of the tenth papal anniversary of Pope Leo XIII in 1888 prompted Catholic Tongans to prepare the nicest objects to send for display in the Vatican Exhibition that same year. Many of those objects were Tongan textiles. Father Pierre Guitta (1887) remarked proudly in his letter of September 23, 1887, to Nicolet, magistrate to the Holy See how Tongan women had made a beautiful fine mat: “One month ago, my reverend father, a case left from Tonga in which are enclosed several Tongan objects for the jubilee exhibition, they are a mat, made by the women of Mua [Mu‘a], capital city of our district. Never before such a large fine mat was made in Tonga. There is also a basket, combs, etc.”22 While acquiring objects became an integral part of the Wesleyan missionary program in Tonga, this activity that had always existed among Catholics was now intensified by the Marists. Thomas (1991: 157–158) explains that “on one side it was essential for fund-raising propaganda and the overall rationale that barbarism and the darkness of paganism appeared to be shocking and arbitrary; on the other, the indigenous character was not totally repugnant, not totally devoid of the seeds of improvement, and indeed already had commendable features.” To create a positive image in contrast with the “idols,” other forms of material culture, such as baskets, cloth, pottery, and wood carving were added and symbolized the “sympathetic” character of indigenous aesthetics and creativity and proved the skillfulness of the indigenous people (Stéfani 2000: 12). Many of the objects that were collected were displayed at different venues in order to raise funds for the missionary project. One famous such exhibition took place at the Exposition universelle d’art et d’industrie in Paris in 1867. The London Missionary Society, the Wesleyan Missionary Society, and numerous other Protestant societies23 collaborated to set up a stand at the Pavillon des missions evangéliques protestantes, while the Catholics had their separate stand at the Pavillon des missions catholiques (Reybaud 1867: 712; Wingfield 2012: 153). Author’s translation from French: Il y a un mois, mon révérend père il est partie de Tonga une caisse où sont renfermés plusieurs objets Tongiens pour l’exposition jubilaire, ce sont une natte fabriquée par les femmes de Mua, chef-lieu de notre district. Il ne s’est jamais fait à Tonga de natte aussi grande. Il y a aussi un panier, des peignes etc.. (Guitta 1887). 23 The Protestant societies included: the Baptist Missionary Society, the CMS, the Free Church of Scotland, the Paris Missionary Society, the Moravian Missionary Society, the Dutch Missionary Society, the Basel Mission Society, the Danish Missionary Society, the Missionary Society of the American Episcopal Church, the American Association for Overseas Missions, the Religious Tract societies from London, New York, and Paris as well as the Sunday School Society, the British and Foreign Bible Society, the Bible Society of France, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel among the Jews, the Bible Stand of London, and the Salle Evangélique (Wingfield 2012: 153).

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It seems that both Wesleyans and Marists did not actively collect barkcloth. Instead pieces came to them in the form of gifts. Walter Lawry (1822) on August 27, 1822, accounts how “The old Chiefs stripped off their tapas and gave us; these were his best garments.” Barkcloth was given to John Thomas’s (1832a) wife on the occasion of a visit to the Tamahā24 on January 28, 1832: “After Sun set we visited the Tamaha at her own dwelling; She received us very kindly & presented Mrs Thomas with a large bale of native Cloth and was very glad to see us.” A few weeks later, in mid February 1832, John Thomas (1832b) was thanked with a present of barkcloth for his help in assisting a sick man. It is remarkable that when Tongans gave objects as a token of their conversion to Christianity, they never presented barkcloths. Missionaries also acquired barkcloth through payments made to them. John Thomas (1844) reports on July 14, 1844: “As the natives are required to give some remuneration for the Medicines which he dispenses which the Mission supplies; and the harvest consists of yams, fowls, pigs, native cloth & etc.”

Collecting souvenirs During the latter half of the nineteenth century, Tongan barkcloths were brought back on a regular basis. There was a constant flow of “collecting.” A variety of people comprising missionaries and private collectors, but also institutions with no named collectors participated in the process of acquiring Tongan barkcloth. Exploring voyages were organized less frequently. There was on the other hand a significant rise of government officials and individual travelers. Some started bringing back “souvenirs” (Table A.1). The collecting of Tongan material culture, which was not part of the official task of missionaries or government officials, thus depended on their own personal interests. This, of course, was in stark contrast to preceding periods of exploration where guidelines had often been followed and “specialists” had accompanied the ships to these expeditions. From the second half of the nineteenth century onward, objects were being defined as “Tokens of Industry” (Thomas 1991: 175). Material culture expressed the imperial state’s vision of other parts of the world in a more generalized way. Tonga occupied a special position in this “empire” as it was never officially colonized. Campbell (2001: 95) explains how the course of Tongan history was strongly influenced by two new missionaries: Shirley Baker and James Moulton who, respectively, arrived in 1860 and 1865. Both became close friends with

The Tamahā was not only a “woman of royal blood next in rank to the sovereign (tu‘i)” (Churchward 1959: 451) but also “the title given to the female child of the sister of the Tu‘i Tonga, who herself had the title of Tu‘i Tonga Fefine” (Urbanowicz 1979: 228).

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King George Tupou I but had major differences between them. The origin of their disagreements was Baker’s too close association with King George which according to most other missionaries indicated a love of power and involvement in politics that was inconsistent with the missionary vocation. Moulton established Tupou College in 1866 where Tongans could receive a high-standard English education (Campbell 2001: 95). Baker claimed the school was outside the proper work of the mission. One of Shirley Baker’s preoccupations was the rising numbers of settlers who were taking over local government in neighboring Samoa and Fiji. A way to prevent this from happening in Tonga as well was to establish a modern European-style government. A new constitution was drafted and presented to the chiefs and people in 1875. It dealt with three matters: the “Declaration of Rights,” the form of government, and the issue of land. The constitution was actually a radical innovation because it abolished what had remained of traditional chieftainship, it brought royalty under its control, and it made future political change dependent on the rules in the document itself. The king nevertheless preserved a large share of power (Campbell 2001: 98–99). In 1900 Tonga became a British protectorate (Campbell 2001: 133). The fact that the islands never really belonged to the British Empire nor to any other European imperial power explains why far fewer Europeans settled on Tonga than on neighboring Samoa or Fiji. This gave less opportunity for objects being brought to Europe. The few barkcloths collected still constituted a palpable and concrete presence serving as proof of having been in Tonga. Indigenous items almost became trophies, which reflected the novel experiences of a world traveler. The paucity of Tongan cloths from especially the early nineteenth century is hard to explain. Still, a number of factors might have contributed to the drop in collecting. It may be that Europeans actively decided not to collect Tongan barkcloth, though they had access to it, because it did not correspond to Europeans’ taste who preferred hardwood items. Moreover, the situation in Tonga had become rather unsafe because some commercial agents and beachcombers fostered a spirit of local rivalry. The use of firearms was fully understood and several important chiefs, probably humiliated by arrogant captains, accepted and exploited the concept of ransom in cross-cultural diplomacy. Ambitious chiefs and greedy captains exacerbated the situation. It might have resulted in barkcloth ceasing to be an appropriate presenting item for foreigners. At the same time, missionaries could use barkcloth to shed a positive light on the new converts. The coming of missionaries almost certainly played a role in Tongans re-evaluating their material culture, but barkcloth remained important in the building of social relations within Tonga. Today Tongan barkcloth is circulated widely in Tonga and its Diaspora communities in New Zealand, Australia, and the west coast of the United States, but also regularly makes its way into museum collections.

PART TWO

CREATIVITY

4 CREATIVITY IN SHAPES AND FORMS The past I visit—the 200-year past that I visit—is on paper. Mostly. Sometimes it is in things with human creativity encapsulated in them— ships, ornaments, art, buildings, landscape. GREG DENING (2004: 21)

While Bronwen Douglas (1999) argues that all European pictorial and written records are dotted with signs of indigenous presence and therefore open up possibilities for reading Islanders’ actions, desires, and agency, coined as “indigenous countersigns,” the limitations of using European documentary sources to reconstruct Polynesians’ histories remain paramount (Dening 1966). However, Tongan voices most clearly permeate through their objects in the same way as expressed above by Dening (2004: 21) who examines some of the European past through created objects. Hence, this chapter accepts the premise that barkcloths themselves offer a unique unmediated insight into Tongan creativity through different times and in various locales. In so doing, it partially remediates the biased European gaze dealt with in the previous sections, which relied heavily on European sources. This object-centered approach puts at its focal point Tongan-style barkcloths, characterized by its specific technical method: sheets of plain barkcloth are glued together to form huge barkcloths which are then embellished by means of rubbing blocks. As Schneider and Weiner (1986: 179) remark, the study of barkcloth can help explain issues of long-distance trade, colonialism, revolution, and nationalism. In this chapter I try to tease out through the personal encounters with Tongan pieces how the occurrence of Tongan-style barkcloth, its motifs, and shapes indexes Tongan relations with its neighbors, its sphere of influence, and its historical events.

Tongan-style barkcloth Tongan decorated barkcloth is characterized by rubbed designs with overpainting to highlight the patterns. The repetition of patterns with the basic overall symmetry

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of translation typifies this style (Crowe 1994: 79–80, 2002: 21). Translation is obtained by shifting the barkcloths over the papa koka‘anga. It creates the horizontal reiteration of exactly the same design. However, an identical technique to decorate barkcloths is used in Tonga’s neighboring areas of Samoa and Eastern Fiji, next to the freehand painted technique in Samoa and the stenciling technique in Fiji. Eastern Fiji even has barkcloths that combine both rubbed and stenciled elements. They are called gatu vakaviti (barkcloth in the style of Fiji) to contrast with the wholly rubbed pieces that are called gatu vakatoga (barkcloth in the style of Tonga). The use of the Tongan word for barkcloth /gatu/ and reference to Tonga in the name of this specific type of Fijian barkcloth suggests that Fiji picked up this style from Tonga. Gatu vakaviti was already present when Charles Wilkes’ expedition reached Fiji in 1840 (see Chapter 1, section titled “The quest for barkcloth names”). He pointed out that in the same year in Samoa there was considerable Tongan influence expressed in material culture: “The natives of Tonga, in habits, customs, looks, and general appearance, are so like the Samoans, that we were greatly struck with the resemblance; indeed, in writing of Samoa I mentioned that many things have been derived from Tonga, particularly their tapa covering from the waist downwards, called siapo” (Wilkes 1845: vol. 3, 25). The most significant characteristic of nineteenth-century barkcloth is that it is problematic to distinguish between Tongan, Samoan, Fijian, and ‘Uvean rubbed barkcloth. It actually reflects an historical reality of Tongan expansion where Tongan barkcloth and other items of material culture could be found in Tonga’s expansion area (Eastern Fiji, Samoa, and ‘Uvea). In 1970, Burrows (1970: 19–20) posited that barkcloth in Tonga, Samoa, Fiji, ‘Uvea, Futuna, and Rotuma was so similar that it was possible to talk about Western Polynesian barkcloth making technique: pasting strips together instead of felting them to form a sheet of two or more layers and decorating them by means of a rubbing block. Kooijman (1972: 417–418, 1973: 103) recognizes additional technical differences: the beaters utilized to work the bark are heavier and wider in Western Polynesia and only have five to eight grooves. The beating itself is much quicker and more superficial which results in rather thick and stiff barkcloth. The dyes also diverge. In Western Polynesia the main source of the reddish-brown color is the Bischofia javanica. The plant does not occur east of Samoa. Mineral dyes are limited to Western Polynesia with the exception of Easter Island because of its lack of trees.

Barkcloth design through time Color Taking into consideration the surviving barkcloths in museums, the descriptions in accounts and the pictorial material, a picture of the color characteristics

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of barkcloth emerges: next to the rubbed barkcloths, the black, semi-black and intricately overpainted pieces, undecorated barkcloths appear as a significant category up to the late nineteenth century. The fact that very few of the uncolored eighteenth-century barkcloth ended up in museum collections might reflect the types of encounters that were occurring. Chiefly people met captains and voyage scientists offering them the best cloths they had: colored ngatu. While in the eighteenth century the group of rubbed barkcloth is only slightly more substantial than the black and semi-black barkcloths, the rubbed pieces constitute the largest barkcloth style in the twentieth century. There is only one white eighteenth-century barkcloth known, which belongs to the Bruni d’Entrecasteaux collection in Dunkerque. Plain white barkcloth appears in Hodges’s and Webber’s drawings made during Cook’s voyages, but Ravenet and Bauza’s images of Malaspina’s voyage show motifs. Were barkcloths in eighteenth-century Tonga plain white or colored? It seems that Cook-voyage artists did not pay attention to decoration on barkcloth, but had an eye for all sorts of other details. William Hodges for example depicted the missing little finger in some of the figures of his “Landing at Middelburgh.” John Webber rendered patterns on matting and lashing in detail. He depicted leaf girdles or even tattoos in “A Boxing Match, Friendly Islands, 1778,” where one of the boxers, wearing a plain white wrap-around skirt held in place with a girdle of leaves or a short matting belt with tassels, displays a number of dots on his left calf (Joppien and Smith 1988: vol. 3, catalogue: 309, Plate 12). Sloppiness on the part of the artists can therefore be ruled out. In contrast with the Malaspina voyage artists who focused on individual portraits, the Cook voyage artists usually represented big groups of people who did not belong to the chiefly class and were therefore wearing everyday uncolored barkcloth. The nineteenth century follows the drawing and painting tradition of Cook’s voyages in the way that almost no barkcloths with motifs are represented. Some forty years later, Mariner (1827: vol. 1, 144) described a clothing item as “a sort of turban, made of white gnatoo, …”. On another occasion he remarked again a white barkcloth headdress: “they usually cover it [the hair] with about a square yard of white gnatoo, …” (Mariner 1827: vol. 1, 272). Of the very few early nineteenth-century barkcloths that reached museum collections, more than half are plain. A photograph taken in the late 1880s demonstrates that people were still wearing white barkcloth (Figure 2.3). In some areas of Polynesia such as Tikopia, Raymond Firth (1936: 396, 409, 1965: 240) explains that in the 1920s plain barkcloth was, besides basic clothing, a valuable unit of exchange.1 We do not know whether white barkcloth ever had a similar role in Tonga (Guiot 2014).

Tikopia is historically more closely connected to Samoa, but the tradition of decorated barkcloth was never taken to Tikopia (Kirch 2000: 143–144).

1

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A passage in George Forster’s (1999: vol. 1, 229) account dated October 2, 1773, reports the “brown colour.” His entry for June 27, 1774, states that people “were drest [sic] from the waist to the ankles, in a piece of stiff painted cloth made of the bark” (Forster 1999: vol. 1, 410). On June 28, the next year, he described a high-ranking woman of Tongatapu and also paid attention to her dress: “She was of a lighter colour than the common people, and wore a brown cloth which closely embracing [sic] the body immediately under the breast, but being somewhat wider towards the feet, perhaps, suited her better than the most elegant European dress” (Forster 1999: vol. 1, 415). George Forster stated clearly that Tongan people wore colored clothes. Johann Reinhold Forster (1982: 377) noted in 1773 that the presented cloths were colored: “Soon after came a chief & got presents. They brought off vast Quantities of Cloth, which is stained brown & black, oiled & glazed: & fine Mats: their belts are of Coconut Core.” Surprisingly, writings from the third voyage are less emphatic about the fact that barkcloth was colored. It is discussed on one occasion without any further specification. Charles Clerke (1967: 1302) when talking about dance clothing in 1777 stated: “they were decorated upon this Occasion, with Cloth of various Colours, which set off their Persons, that were by Nature exceeding good, to much Advantage.” Textual sources inform us of the existence and use of black ngatu, while few of the images show people wearing such barkcloth (Figure 4.1). Mariner (1827: vol. 1, 316) described a burial in the early nineteenth century (1806–1810) where the house was covered with black ngatu: “This black gnatoo [ngatu], or rather gnatoo of a dark colour, having a deep brown ground with black stripes, ….” The description of this type of barkcloth bears close resemblance to ngatu ‘uli (black barkcloth) collected during Cook’s voyages (Plate 10). There seems to be a continued tradition from the late eighteenth to the early nineteenth century as far as the ngatu ‘uli are concerned. George Daniel (1852), a Wesleyan missionary, describes a burial on Sunday June 21, 1852, and states: “After them came about 200 local Teachers almost all dressed in white shirts and black native Cloth.”

Size While the amount of barkcloth and pictorial information is relatively large for the late eighteenth-century period, the number of voyages that supplied barkcloth is limited: Cook’s visits to Tonga in 1773-1774, and 1777, Bruni d’Entrecasteaux and Malaspina’s visits in 1793. Of those four voyages, Cook’s are much better documented and give the most sources to analyze the formal and design characteristics of barkcloth in Tonga. This reflects the special status Cook and his voyages have developed over the centuries. Only one Malaspina barkcloth has been located (Plate 16). This barkcloth is almost thirty meters long and has

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Figure 4.1  “Taufa, mujer de Vuna.” Taufa, the wife of Vuna is wearing a dark striped barkcloth. Drawn by Juan Ravenet (Sotos Serrano 1982: 243, fig. 769). © Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid.

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both complete width and length, because the four white sparsely decorated borders are visible. The whole piece is decorated with a black grid of squares of which the centers are filled in with short lines. Until seeing this unique Malaspina voyage barkcloth (Plate 16), I was under the assumption that all the pieces in the corpus of eighteenth-century barkcloths were incomplete (Plate 11 and Figure 4.2). The ideal Tongan barkcloth has a rectangular overall shape and four undecorated tapa borders (Figure  4.3). Although—as explained earlier and seen in the Shaw books—Europeans often cut up barkcloths, this activity was not the sole prerogative of Westerners (Figure 3.1). In the eighteenth century, Tongans too partitioned ngatu, which had been given during ceremonies, and subsequently distributed segments to the appropriate people. Europeans therefore often acquired distributions and not whole cloths (Forster 1999: 248, vol. 1). The crew members of Malaspina’s voyage are the only historical sources stressing that barkcloths could be very long, going from the “seashore to the kava house” (de Viana 1849: 280; Malaspina and de Bustamante y Guerra 1885: 271). Other evidence in historical eighteenth-century texts is lacking. One can surmise that unless attending a presentation—after which ngatu is cut up and

Figure 4.2  Three pieces of ngatu tāhina, collected by Johann Reinhold and George Forster. Deposited in 1982 by Peter Rheinberger. The diagram shows how the three pieces fit together. 1774.540.14.1, 1774.540.14.2, 1774.540.16. © Bernisches Historisches Museum, Bern. Photograph: Christine Moor. Diagram: Author.

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Figure 4.3  Stylized representation of ngatu tāhina (left) and ngatu ‘uli (right).

distributed—barkcloths would not have been seen in their full length. Based on this sole Malaspina voyage piece, of which the width roughly corresponds to presentday barkcloth widths, we can conclude that ngatu lengths were approximately the same as today. For ensuing centuries, few complete Tongan barkcloths have been identified in museum collections. Late eighteenth-century barkcloth varied in width between 200 cm and a little over 300 cm. This width corresponds to the “six or eight feet long” papa koka‘anga that Mariner (1827: vol. 2, 204) described (see Chapter 2). By the late nineteenth century, barkcloth widths had increased to 270 cm and 350 cm to reach a width of 400–450 cm today.

Layout Despite the incompleteness of most of the museum barkcloths, one can still get a general idea of its layout. The larger pieces usually have at least one undecorated border consisting of the original beige white color of the barkcloth with sometimes a few brown strokes. If the piece itself is mainly black, the border or borders are dyed in a brown red color, which may or may not be enclosed by a plain tapa border (see Chapter 1, section titled “The quest for barkcloth names”). The general rule is thus that there are no designs on the border. A complete Tongan barkcloth probably had the main design surface enclosed by four undecorated borders as is exemplified by the Malaspina barkcloth (Plate 16). After the arrival of missionaries and the introduction of the Latin alphabet, numbers usually appear on the tapa border, marking the length of the pieces. Taking into consideration the two possible colors of the border (white or red brown) and the color of the designs enclosed by the border, two broad categories of ngatu can be

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discerned. These two classes of barkcloth correspond to what is now generally known in Tonga as ngatu (tā)‘uli (black barkcloth)2 and ngatu tāhina3 (white or light colored barkcloth) (Figure 4.3). Whether a barkcloth belongs to one of those classes is decided on basis of formal characteristics, but Tamahori (1963: 154) rightly points out that the use of a particular ngatu can be an important factor for its classification, certainly for the limited number of ngatu that show formal characteristics of both ngatu ‘uli and ngatu tāhina classes. As not even one third of the barkcloths are ngatu ‘uli, the corpus of eighteenth-century barkcloths moreover supports Tamahori’s (1963: 177) claim that historical ngatu specimens are mainly ngatu tāhina. This is still the case today.

Motifs A finite number of design tablets (kupesi) and/or design elements characterizes ngatu. The designs in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were mainly geometric. Figurative designs make their appearance in the late nineteenth century (Figure 4.4). While most of the designs occurring on Tongan late eighteenth-century barkcloth are still known today—although some are not used frequently anymore—a number of them have lost their modern-day equivalent (Plates 4 and 11). Barkcloths characterized by a complex pattern—already an exceptional style in the eighteenth century—disappear altogether in the subsequent periods. As vernacular design names do not occur in eighteenth or nineteenth-century sources, contemporary design names will be given. Evidently it is not known whether the same names were used in historical times and whether they were widespread or restricted to a particular region, family, or individual. It is however remarkable that for motifs, which are no longer commonly used, contemporary names exist (see for example the tūtū‘uli motif). Comments on designs and technique are evidently based on current practice as observed by twentieth- and twenty-first-century researchers and myself. Several arguments have been proposed to explain the geometric nature of ngatu designs. Donna Taylor (1960: 51) argues that mat weaving has greatly influenced both the individual design elements and their overall arrangement. Filipe Tohi (personal communication, July 2003), a Tongan tufunga lalava (lashing) artist based in New Zealand believes that many patterns are derived from the

The Tongan curator and Tongan arts specialist Kolokesa Māhina-Tuai always uses ngatu tā ‘uli in both her informal conversations with me as well as in her written work. It literally means “barkcloth beaten with black.” I will use the shorter ngatu ‘uli as this was most commonly used in my conversations with Tongan women and is also the labeling that usually occurs in literature. 3 Tamahori (1963: 178) believes the word tā hina can be deconstructed into tā meaning “to hit” and hina meaning “white or light coloured.” 2

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1773−1800 1800−1850 1850−1900 1900−1950 1950−2000 2000−2015 kumi kupu potuuamanuka manulua tūtū ‘uli pangai kafa hehema lautoa longolongo (herringbone) tatautuisipa amoamokofe checkerboard pattern fo‘i hea - dot crescent matahihifi triangle figurative designs star writing plant designs

Figure 4.4  Overview of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Tongan barkcloth motifs indicating their continuation into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Unshaded: motif is not mentioned in texts, nor does it occur on studied barkcloths; Light gray: motif is mentioned in texts, but not found on studied barkcloths; Dark gray: motif is not necessarily mentioned in texts but occurs on studied barkcloths.

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structural/architectural art of lashing. Taylor and Tohi attribute ngatu designs to different origins. Obviously, lashing and barkcloth share that they have far more decoration than is necessary to respectively hold buildings together or link segments of barkcloth during the koka‘anga process. Moreover, they both spring from the importance of securing and wrapping (see Chapter 6). Interestingly, in the essentially male art of lashing and the largely female art of barkcloth-making, the same color scheme is used: red, brown, and black to cover the natural color of the timber (for lashing) or of the inner bark (for barkcloth). Andrew Mills (2007) demonstrated a clear correlation between the art of war present on club surface patterns and geometric ngatu motives. Both ngatu ‘uli and ngatu tāhina have different decorative elements, but those of the ngatu ‘uli do not have separate names. Instead the totality of the ngatu with its designs is named. A subcategory of the ngatu tāhina needs special attention: the ngatu fuatanga. What makes ngatu fuatanga special is the manner in which they are made. Making a fuatanga is much more complicated than creating an ordinary ngatu tāhina. The labor intensity contributes to the high status of the fuatanga. First the tapa border is made and decorated with the vakatou motif. Then this tapa border is turned and placed perpendicularly on the right/left edge of the papa koka‘anga. Six langanga and two tapa borders, which make a total of eight langanga, are then attached to the tapa border with the vakatou motif. The undecorated tapa borders hence respectively form the top and bottom edges of the fuatanga being created. Instead of the finished piece falling in the lap of the women, it falls off the right/left edge of the papa koka‘anga (Figure 4.5). The laulalo or under layer strips run parallel to the length of the ngatu and the upper sheets run from side to side to form the width. The way to measure the width and the length of a ngatu fuatanga also differs. The width of a ngatu fuatanga is expressed by toka and the length, which is slightly larger than a langanga, is hiki followed by the number. For a fuatanga, eight toka are counted as equal to one fuatanga langanga and are never numbered along the border (Tuna Fielakepa, personal communication 2003, Tuna Fielakepa, via Tanya Edwards May 2016) (Tamahori 1963: 193–194). Tuna Fielakepa claimed the double triangular motif or vakatou (Figure 4.5) always means the barkcloth is of the ngatu fuatanga type (personal communication 2003).

Kumi kupu Kumi kupu is a type of ngatu ‘uli characterized by a uniformly black surface obtained by sprinkling soot and rubbing it all over the surface. The borders have a red color. While this type of ngatu ‘uli was not attested for from the nineteenth century onward, I saw this style of barkcloth during the preparations for the 2003 royal wedding between Hon. Lupepau‘u and Matai‘ulua. One of the women organizing the wedding bed came to thank me for having brought “our old motifs back to us.” Indeed one of the barkcloths the women were folding

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Step 1: making the tapa border with vakatou motif on the papa koka‘anga.

Toko taha Toko ua Toko tolu

ki Hi

a

eu

Toko fā

H

iki

a

ah

et

Toko nima Toko ono

Step 3: adding more lenghts of barkcloth. The finished parts are falling to the right of the papa koka‘anga.

Toko fitu Toko valu Step 2: placing the tapa border perpendicularly on the papa koka‘anga and adding eight strips of barkcloth.

Figure 4.5  Different steps in assembling a ngatu fuatanga.

at the parental house of the groom combined a star design and a uniformly black design occurring on eighteenth-century barkcloths (Plates 12 and 25). I had shown and passed on photographs of these cloths during meetings with women at koka‘anga parties in 2003 and apparently they had been shown to relatives and friends. The way in which Tongan women saw a direct connection between the past and the present reveals the perpetuated purpose of barkcloth. It moreover shows the interest of people—mostly women—in knowing more about the history of a material with which they are still deeply involved (Davidson 1993 8–10). On that occasion the women made history as it is understood by Dening (1996: 44), who writes: “Past and present are bound together in an interpretative act we call History.”

Potuuamanuka Ngatu ‘uli with potuuamanuka are characterized by black bands alternating with lighter colored reddish black bands (Tamahori 1963: 166). The potuuamanuka design can cover the whole or just part of the barkcloth (Plate 13) or can be arranged in a checkerboard pattern. Tamahori (1963: 168) states that this style of decoration was no longer commonly produced in twentieth-century Tonga. Nevertheless, it probably was common up to the first decade of the nineteenth century because this ngatu is the only type of which the motifs were ever discussed and described

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by Mariner (1827: vol. 1, 316): “This black gnatoo, or rather gnatoo of a dark colour, having a deep brown ground with black stripes, is not chosen on account of its colour, but because it is coarse and common (emblematical of poverty and sadness). They have a kind of gnatoo of very superior quality, but of the same colour and pattern, and this is used on occasions of rejoicing.”

Tūtū ‘uli Barkcloth with parallel diagonal black lines on a red background are called tūtū ‘uli. This type of design was rather exceptional in the 1950s according to Tamahori (1963: 173). I have only seen it on eighteenth-century museum pieces. It is unclear whether the design of diagonal lines can be called tūtū ‘uli—which is the name referring to a subdivision of ngatu ‘uli—or whether the name is only appropriate when the entire piece is covered in diagonal lines. Tamahori (1963: 173) claims the word means “to sprinkle with black.”

Manulua The manulua is a common design all over Western Polynesia. It is formed by eight right-angled triangles that are organized in four adjacent squares; the acute angles of the triangles touch at the center, giving the appearance of a “vane swastika” in a large square. The word manulua means “two birds,” manu being “bird” and (l)ua meaning “two.” Kaeppler (1995: 108–109) claims that it is an allusion to two birds flying together symbolizing chiefly status derived from intermixing chiefly descent from both parental lines. The manulua motif is used as a heliaki, a social metaphor by which you say one thing to mean another (Māhina 2004b: 20). Heliaki are deployed in the context of formal language, embodied in oratory, poetry, and proverbs. In Tongan poetry, references to birds are frequent and usually allude to the ranking of male chiefs (Kaeppler 1995: 108–109). Manulua can be used both on ngatu ‘uli and on ngatu tāhina. When, however, the manulua is part of a ngatu ‘uli the barkcloth is called manulua ‘uli (Tamahori 1963: 175). In this type of barkcloths the design might have been produced by means of a kupesi, but is accentuated by overpainting in black. Tamahori (1963: 188) states that painting the manulua design in black often occurred when the longolongo (see further in this chapter) design was used as background. Again the manulua design can completely or just partially cover a piece (Plates 9 and 10).

Pangai kafa and hehema lautoa Pangai kafa and hehema lautoa are discussed together because they are both not obtained by using a loose kupesi (Tamahori 1963: 84). The pangai kafa design is created by winding coconut husk sennit (kafa) around the papa koka‘anga or back and forth over the width of the papa koka‘anga; the hehema

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lautoa design follows the same procedure but the kafa is wound diagonally on the papa koka‘anga. Tamahori (1963: 84) claims this kind of design obtained by the kafa imprint makes it suitable for presentation to people of rank and becomes therefore a ngatu ‘eiki. The pangai kafa design occurs still on early nineteenthcentury ngatu. Thereafter it disappears from museum collections. The hehema lautoa is completely absent from the early nineteenth century onward.

Longolongo The herringbone design is designated by the name longolongo (Free Wesleyan Church of Tonga 2002). Churchward (1959: 301) describes longolongo as “ornamental palm or tree-fern with fine pinnate leaves. Cycas circinalis.” This design indeed recalls a stylized representation of a palm or fern leaf. Kupesi producing these longolongo designs were made by stitching coconut midribs on a plate of pandanus and coconut palm sheaths (see Chapter 2, section titled “Rubbing boards”). Tamahori (1963: 189) writes that longolongo are usually separated by bands of brown dye that are called hala kafa (pathway of coconut husk sennit). The overpainting often present on barkcloths with longolongo designs accentuates the different structures.

Fo‘i hea The fo‘i hea or plain black dot is seen exclusively on overpainted barkcloths. Fo‘i hea already occurred on Cook voyage barkcloth (Plate 14). The single black handpainted dot depicts the fruit from the hea tree of which scented oil was made that would be presented to the chiefly classes and used for cosmetic purposes (Addo 2004b: 20). Only in the second half of the nineteenth century they start appearing in groups of three, called tukihea (Lythberg 2013: 94). Tongan women have told me that the three dots refer to the three dots found on the coconut. The tukihea might therefore be connected to the story known all over Polynesia where a princess refused to kiss an eel-king. The eel-king was beheaded and out of his remains grew the coconut palm whose fruits resemble the face of the eel with two eyes and a mouth. The eel-king got his way after all, because if the princess wanted to quench her thirst she had to put her lips on the mouth of the coconut and was thus kissing the eel-king.

Tatautuisipa This type of kupesi is classified by Tamahori (1963: 179) as a “woven kupesi.” Tatautuisipa is the name of the woven leaf partitions in a chief’s house, used for screening off the sleeping quarters (Tamahori 1963: 183). Indeed, according to Churchward (1959: 460, 505, 431) tatau is a “movable mat partition for screening off a sleeping-place”; tui is “to thread”; and sipa means “to stagger,

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reel, or wobble.” It is made by weaving mangrove slats and pandanus or coconut leaf together, which are arranged on a slant. The weaving is done straight up and down the slats, but because of the angle at which they are placed, the weaving appears to be going diagonally in the opposite direction. Another set of rows is started above the first row before it is completed and the finished effect is of a zigzag pattern made by the interwoven strands. To keep the slat on a slant, a background of vertical slats is woven together and the diagonal slats affixed to them. No secondary design tablet is placed over the tatautuisipa and the distinctiveness of the design is dependent upon the decorative weaving. This design is only present on Cook voyage barkcloths (Plate 15).

Amoamokofe The amoamokofe design is described as “a kupesi from Vava‘u.” The amoamokofe designs appear on barkcloths of the ngatu tāhina class in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries (1986: 9). However, it needs to be observed that Tamahori (1963: 169) only discusses this design as part of a ngatu ‘uli. The amoamokofe design is one of the most common lalava (architectural lashing) patterns (Mills 2007: 318). Mills (2007: 318) reports that Skinner recognized this design on a fragment of a carved arrow box from Vava‘u. The competitive shooting of birds and rats was an elite sport in nineteenth-century Tongan society (Mariner 1818: 148–164; Skinner 1969: 533). A chiefly burial place, the Langi Katoa in Lapaha, the capital of Tonga from the thirteenth to the nineteenth century on Tongatapu, shows on its stonewalls the amoamokofe design (Egan and Burley 2009: 217–218; Malloy 2000; McKern 1929). It seems to have close associations with Vava‘u and the chiefly classes in Tonga. However, James (1988b: 5–6) defines this design when occurring in a single band form as the mat design Tapa Kaisi, which she connects with the commoner people in Tonga. Robertson (1989: 21) translates amoamokofe as “to massage/rub (amoamo) with a bamboo stick (kofe).” Conversely, for Churchward (1959: 6) amoamo means “to stroke (as one would a cat)” and Tu‘inukuafe (1992: 35) offers amohi. The latter two respectively define body massage as tolotolo (Churchward 1959: 493) and fota (Tu‘inukuafe 1992: 159–160). Mills (2007: 317–318) offers an alternative for the meaning of the word amoamokofe “in the spirit of the heliaki [metaphors] to be seen in many kupesi names.” He believes that amoamokofe developed from the phrase “Ha‘amoa moko fei,” meaning “do the lashing of the roof structure of a building with sennit on the horizontal, longitudinal roof-members as in Samoa” (Churchward 1959: 147, 363). Mills argues that “Ha‘amoamokofei” became “amoamokofe” over time. It is indeed in the context of lalava (architectural lashing) that amoamokofe is most commonly seen. Moreover it is known that fiber arts have been influenced by Samoan culture (Kaeppler 1999b: 222). According to Mariner (1827: vol. 1, 205) there were

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Samoan fine mats present in Vava’u. Samoan fiber arts are intimately associated with the Tu‘i Kanokupolu kingship, a lineage which (in part) originated on ‘Upolu in Samoa (Kaeppler 1999b: 222).

Checkerboard pattern Both the Forsters explicitly mentioned the checkerboard patterns (Plates 4 and  11) as being characteristic for ngatu. George Forster (1999: vol. 1, 235) wrote in 1773: “This was a long piece of cloth made of bark, in the same manner as the Taheitee cloth, but afterwards painted chequerwise, or in patterns nearly resembling our painted floor-cloths, and covered with a size [sic], which turned the wet for a long while.” His father Johann Reinhold Forster (1982: 545) also gave a detailed description of the patterns: “… or they wear a piece of cloth, made of the cloth tree, which is on one side smooth, shining, & as it were oiled & glazed; & all dark brown; some as it were painted in compartments of chequerwork with white & black strokes on it.” This description corresponds to the Malaspina barkcloth at the Museo de América (Plate 16). Neither Tamahori (1963)- nor Tongan-published booklets discuss the checkerboard design, but Churchward (1959: 420) calls them pule-veimau. There are a number of eighteenth-century ngatu (Plates 4, 11, and 12) that show a variation on the checkerboard pattern. However, the motif disappears altogether in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The checkerboard pattern displays similar characteristics to Tongan club surfaces. James (1988b) names these patterns efu when occurring on mats. Visually, the pattern does correspond to the appearance of mat plaiting with its longitudinal crease lines. Churchward (1959: 16) translates efu as “dust” or as “fine mat somewhat like the fihu.” Mills (2007: 318–318) reports that Atolo Tu‘inukuafe, an Anglican Church minister, says that efu, when used in relation to mats implies that the pandanus strips are so finely split, their weaving resembles dust. The labor intensity of hand weaving determines the value of a Tongan fine mat (Herda 1999: 159). Whether efu is applicable to barkcloth patterns remains unclear, even more so that Tuna Fielakepa (personal communication 2003) calls the checkerboard pattern on barkcloth fekainaki, which is then repeated on either side of the ngatu (Tuna Fielakepa, via Tanya Edwards May 2016). Churchward (1959: 159) defines fekainaki as “to be continually snapping at, or even swearing at one another.” A beautiful example of a chequerboard pattern, which comes across as a woven mat pattern, is at the Museo de América (Plate 16).

Matahihifi From the second half of the nineteenth century onward, the elongated triangle makes its appearance on Tongan barkcloth (Plate 17). The triangles are usually filled in with different rubbed motifs. Despite there being no evidence for this

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motif on earlier Tongan pieces, the presence on Lauan (eastern Fijian) barkcloth of the first half of the nineteenth century (Plate 18) and its later popularity from 1850 onward leads us to conjecture that the matahihifi design had precedents in early nineteenth-century Tongan barkcloth.

Other geometric motifs In the late nineteenth century, other geometric designs such as rectangles and triangles appear (Plate 17). One such design is the fakatoukatea, which is composed of several triangles joined at their apexes (Kaeppler 1995: 109). There are also triangular motifs which are part of barkcloths but which are not of the matahihifi type and for which no contemporary name has been attested. As discussed earlier, triangles make up the manulua motif. There are a few barkcloths for which no specific barkcloth design names have been found. They include four or eight-pointed stars (fetu‘u) or designs derived from the plant world. The fata or the fata ‘o Tu‘i Tonga design becomes popular in the twentieth century. It consists of a series of concentric squares crossed by diagonal lines (Robertson 1989: 17). It refers to the complex structure and lashing of the chief’s house and as such forms a heliaki (metaphor) for chiefly status. While fata ‘o Tu‘i Tonga do not appear on eighteenth-century barkcloth, the motif is rather common as appliquéd design on baskets and roof lashing of that period as can be seen on the house of the Tu‘i Tonga Fatafehi Paulaho4 in Webber’s drawing.

Tohi With the arrival of beachcombers, but especially with the missionary presence, the use of the Latin alphabet is introduced. Literacy was a high priority of the Wesleyan missionaries, who established a public school in March 1828. The literacy and numeracy program eventually led to the establishment of Tupou College in 1866, offering education to commoners and chiefly people alike (Douaire-Marsaudon 2009: 168–169). Written numbers (tohi) first make their appearance on the undecorated borders of the barkcloths to number the langanga. Later on, names of people for whom the cloth is destined, or the subject matter of the design, is written in capital letters. These letters are often mirrored, the E vertically and the L horizontally (Plate 19). The writing also offers dating opportunities, because after the Tongan spelling reforms of 1943, particular sounds were spelled differently. The Tongan voiceless labial stop was changed from /B/ to /P/, the velar nasal /ŋ/ changed from /G/ to /NG/, and the

The name Paulaho is used by Cook and literally means “big balls.” It seems likely that Cook obtained this name via a political opponent of the Tu‘i Tonga who wanted to ridicule the latter.

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glottal stop was represented by the reversed apostrophe /‘/ (Churchward 1999: viii–ix). Therefore when “P,” “NG,” and “ ‘ ” appear on barkcloth, the piece must be from after 1943.

Figurative designs The Peabody Museum, Harvard, USA, holds a Tongan barkcloth collected on the 1899 voyage of the US Fish Commission5 on the Albatross (Plate 20). At first sight the barkcloth looks like a ngatu with geometric designs. A row of three joined rectangles appear perpendicularly alongside both white tapa borders. The central part has a collection of triangles and rectangles organized in horizontal bands. The ngatu further has the traditional black dots (fo‘i hea). The barely decipherable inscription “KOEVAISIMA” (ko e vai sima, the water tank) suggests this might be a representational design. In fact, the joined rectangles depict the Ha‘amonga-‘a-Maui6 in the village of Heketa, close to Lapaha (Map  3), while the triangles are the houses that encapsulated the water tanks. This ngatu thus commemorates the introduction of water tanks in one of the villages near the stone trilithon. Kaeppler (2002: 298) suggests that for the first time the geometric canon of designs is visually elaborated to become a representation of a place and an event which can be understood without using the bypass of a visual metaphor. The use of European writing clarifies the whole subject matter even further. Figurative representation combined with writing will typify twentiethcentury ngatu. Yet, there is an exceptional piece presently held at the Museum of Natural History in Florence, Italy, that was collected during a voyage by Captain Cook. It depicts two-dimensional human figures (Figure 4.6). This is an early example of representational design on ngatu. Adrienne Kaeppler (1978b) attributes this piece to the Society Islands, but claims in a later article (Kaeppler 2002: 292) that it might be Tongan. If this is a Tongan barkcloth, I believe that the process by which this representation was obtained differs greatly from the one used in the Harvard barkcloth. The Florence Cook voyage ngatu might borrow its design from another Tongan medium—clubs—where the use of human figures was common (Mills 2007). Petroglyphs found on an archaeological site in Houmale‘eia on Foa Island in the Ha‘apai Island group of Tonga shows that humanoid figures have a long ancestry in Tonga (Egan and Burley 2009). The layout and motifs used are

The official name of the Fish Commission was the United States Commission of Fish and Fisheries. Its importance in the development of ichthyology was considerable (Kaeppler 2002).

5

The Ha‘amonga-‘a-Maui at Heketa (in the Hahake district of Tongatapu; Map 3), the residence of the Tu‘i Tonga for two generations, is believed to have been built around the twelfth century by Tu‘itātui. This is the earliest monument in Tonga which is associated with a named person in Tongan tradition (Campbell 2001: 31). It is known as the trilithon and is composed of three massive coral slabs. The monument is some four meters high.

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Figure 4.6  Barkcloth with two-dimensional naturalistic designs collected during a voyage of Captain Cook. 214bis, Museum of Natural History in Florence. Photo: Saul Bambi.

more reminiscent of Samoan cloths. However, one cannot compare the Florence cloth to other Samoan cloths of the same period, since the earliest surviving Samoan cloths were collected by Wilkes in the American Exploring Expedition between 1838 and 1842. The Harvard piece uses the canon proper to Tongan barkcloth decoration. While the Florence Cook voyage ngatu knew no emulation in Tonga, the Harvard piece was trendsetting. It can be supposed that the changes in social organization of the ngatu production and the experimenting with new motifs have an origin–cause relationship and can therefore not be seen disconnected from each other. The democratization of the barkcloth production led to a wider range of motifs being accessible since commoners no longer had to be restricted to the motifs of the chiefly women. It seems that even before 1899, when according to Adrienne Kaeppler (2002: 292) the earliest known figurative barkcloth appeared, figurative designs were well established. A barkcloth collected by the naturalist Joseph Jackson during the surveying expedition of HMS Egeria displays flying foxes hanging in a tree with a human figure trying to catch the animals using a bow and an arrow (Plate 19). The inscription reads KOETAU GABEKA, which transcribes in modern Tongan as “Ko e tau ngā peka” meaning “the catching of the flying foxes.” Museum documentation states the piece was collected in Hihifo, Tongatapu in 1889. The depiction of bats in this way celebrates the flying foxes hanging in particular trees on the west side (Hihifo) of modern-day Tongatapu. Today the village of Ha‘avakatolo has the largest population of flying foxes. According to Lythberg (2013), Tongan and Samoan legends tell that Tongatapu’s flying foxes descend from a couple that was presented by the Samoan princess Sina to the Tongan monarch. One of the animals was white, while the other was black with a golden mantle. Ever since that moment, flying foxes have been granted royal protection. The flying mammals represent the royal family of Tonga, the nobles of the villages in Hihifo, and the chiefly families from Samoa by whom

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they were first given. While most flying foxes are of the black and gold variety, white animals are said to make their appearance at royal weddings, coronations, and funerals. This barkcloth probably visually preserves a mātanga, a historic or scenic place. It moreover testifies to the fact that barkcloths started displaying figurative elements at least as early as the late 1880s. Especially during the reign of Queen Sālote (1918–1965) commemorative barkcloths, providing a visual history of important events, places, and people became popular (Kaeppler 1998: 63). Adrienne Kaeppler has been particularly diligent at documenting the introduction of new imagery of twentieth-century barkcloth. She discusses for example a barkcloth, which celebrates the introduction of electricity poles, wires and lamps. While celebrating this historical event it can also be metaphorically understood as the western light joining the genealogical light radiating from the monarchy (Kaeppler 1995: 108). There are also pieces known showing the wind-up gramophone, bicycles, guitars, violins and the passing of Halley’s comet in 1910 (Addo 2004b: 20; Neich and Pendergrast 1997: 44). The occurrence of Spitfire airplanes on barkcloth can be traced back to a very specific event. During World War II, Queen Sālote decided to raise money to buy airplanes so that her island nation could contribute to the war effort. Money for four spitfires was raised. Only two, named Queen Sālote and Prince Tungi-Tonga II, were used in the war. The Queen Sālote, a BM124 Spitfire MkVB, was delivered on March 1, 1942, and after several battles, damage, and repairs it was scrapped on April 15, 1946; the Prince Tungi-Tonga II, a MJ502 Spitfire MKIX, was delivered on November 17, 1943, and scrapped on June 14, 1945, after it had also participated in several battles and undergone repairs (Kaeppler 1998: 51–52). According to Kaeppler (1998: 52), the Spitfire (Sipitifaea) is represented so accurately, it must have been based on the flyer illustrating the first plane after it went into service. Barkcloths using designs that stand as metaphor continue to this day. Examples are the Hala Paini (road of pines) and the Sila (Coat of Arms), which celebrate Tonga’s monarchy and its national identity. The Hala Paini kupesi set was very popular during the latter half of the twentieth century. It shows several pine trees accompanied by a sun, a moon, and a star. The trees refer to the pine trees that line the Hala Tu‘i, “road of the king” going from the palace to the mala‘e kula where the royal tombs are situated. The celestial elements symbolize the monarchy. The Hala Paini design usually flanks the Tongan Coat of Arms. Nowadays this design often stands alone without the pine trees. The Sila incorporates several Western symbols such as the eagle and the dove (lupe). The three stars and the three-crossed sword refer to Tupou I, the first monarch in the modern dynasty. He united the three chiefly lines of Tu‘i Tonga, Tu‘i Ha‘atakalaua, and the Tu‘i Kanokupolu. Other design elements referring to the Tupou dynasty include necklaces (kahoa), scented flower girdles (sisi), and representation of sun, moon, and stars (Kaeppler 1998: 49–51) (see Chapter 7, section titled “A modern dynasty of royals”).

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Because the number of ngatu ‘uli produced since the late eighteenth century has dwindled, the motifs typically connected to this type of barkcloth, associated with the chiefly class, are also in decline. This is probably related to the emancipation of the commoners. The introduction of the 1875 “Declaration of Rights” meant they were no longer supervised by chiefly women. This constituted an important shift in the social organization of barkcloth production (Campbell 2001: 98) (see Chapter 2, section titled “Working together”). Many motifs displayed on ngatu tāhina are continued from the late eighteenth into the twentieth century and some even into the twenty-first century. These include the longolongo design and fo‘i hea. The tatautuisipa design is still present but is not as common as it was in the eighteenth century. A number of motifs such as the hehema lautoa, potuuamanuka, checkerboard pattern, and amoamokofe are not depicted. I argue that these have become less popular, but were not completely abandoned since Tamahori (1963) documented nearly all— with the exception of the checkerboard pattern—in the 1950s. The matahihifi triangles become a prominent feature of Tongan barkcloth (Figure 4.4). The most significant change in ngatu of the late nineteenth century is the appearance of figurative elements and writing. The langanga are numbered or the subject matter is defined (Plates 19 and 20). This is a change of great importance, which only occurred on rubbed barkcloth in Tonga. It can be argued that Fijians and Samoans were less likely to experiment and be innovative with an imported barkcloth tradition. For Tongans, however, the rubbed barkcloth was indigenous and therefore local changes were more readily accepted as a natural creative development within their own tradition. This line of thought follows Thomas’s (1991: 35) argument that distinctive indigenous elements keep their dynamic character. Moreover, as explained earlier, the social changes in Tongan barkcloth production where non-chiefly women obtained more control over the designs used, contributed to more rapid formal changes in ngatu (see Chapter 2, section titled “Working together”).

Barkcloth circulation Numerous historical sources refer to the circulation of barkcloth and other objects within exchange networks between Tonga, Samoa, ‘Uvea (Wallis), and Fiji (Map 2). This led Adrienne Kaeppler (1978c: 246) to construe trade routes where Tonga is considered the apex of a three-cornered exchange network. She argues that material culture reflects the social relations extant at that time. The nineteenth-century Wesleyan missionary John Thomas (in Clark et al. 2014: 10494) writes that imported items included yams, pearl shells, megapode eggs, fine mats, Touchardia latifolia fiber for attaching hooks to large trolling lures and making fishnets, sea bird young, fish from a sacred lake, two kinds of iron wood

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and arrowroot. The young beachcomber Mariner (1827: vol. 1, 257) claims that Tongans exchanged a lot of goods with different foreigners arriving on their shores: But although they strip all strangers, without distinction that come within their power, in return they fit them out with other canoes, (entirely at the expense of the chiefs who shared the plunder); and supply them with so much of the produce of the island as may be necessary to support them in their way home; together with presents of their gnatoo [ngatu], mats, tortoise-shell, &c.; and withal [sic] behave very kindly; but not one single article that has been taken from them, however small the value, is again returned, even with the most earnest entreaty. It is generally accepted that Samoa was part of an early Tongan empire until the ejection of the fifteenth Tu‘i Tonga in the eighteenth century7 from Samoa when the Tongan king was replaced by the ancestor of the Samoan Malietoa family (Gunson 1990b). However documentary evidence points to Tonga still having political influence in Samoa after the expulsion of the Tongan rulers in the eighteenth century (Gunson 1990b: 179). Indeed James Cook was told in 1777 that Samoa was under the dominion of Tongatapu (Anderson 1967: 957). According to Mariner (1827: vol. 1, 205) there were Samoan fine mats present in Vava‘u. It can therefore be concluded that Samoans gave fine mats (‘ie) to Tonga. Barkcloth from Vava‘u, Samoan mats, and kava were ranked as proper gifts to present to the chief of Hihifo (western district of Tongatapu) (Map 3) (Mariner 1827: vol. 1, 205).8 Tahitian traders soon spread the word to their whaling and trading colleagues that Samoa was a safer place to call than Tonga. By 1824 the western islands of Samoa (Manono, Upolu and Savai‘i) had again come under Tongan political influence, represented by Tongan chiefs sympathetic to Europeans. The Baltic German navigator in Russian service, von Kotzebue (in Gunson 1990a: 13–14), records that when he was in Tahiti in March 1824, he heard that “ships returned from the Friendly Islands[,] that their King had recently conquered the Navigator Islands [Samoa], which now paid [a yearly] tribute to him.” It is also clear from his account that upon his arrival at Manono, the high chief who received him was a Tongan ‘eiki (nobleman). While friendly Tongan chiefs campaigned or resided in Samoa, those remaining in the Tongan archipelago were less receptive to European visitors.

According to a Samoan legend, Tonga had authority over Niue, Samoa, Futuna, and ‘Uvea from the first Tu‘i Tonga, ‘Aho‘eitu, to the fifteenth Tu‘i Tonga, Talakaifaiki (Campbell 2001: 264; Gunson 1990b: 176).

7

Mariner’s claim is confirmed by Kaeppler (1999b) in that barkcloth has always been of special importance to the Tu‘i Tonga line, while the importance of mats goes back to the Samoan influence in the Tu‘i Kanokupolu line.

8

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Tonga definitely left an imprint on Samoa through its Tongan-style barkcloth. Samoan barkcloth of the siapo tasina (brown rubbed barkcloth)9 type shows the greatest similarity with the ngatu complex. The maximum width of a Samoan barkcloth in the nineteenth century is comparable to the late eighteenth-century Tongan widths almost reaching 300 cm. Those widths increase over the course of the nineteenth century (Veys 2005: 245). Samoan siapo tasina and Tongan ngatu tāhina are difficult to distinguish from each other. A great number of barkcloths collected in Samoa might actually be “imports” from Tonga. Moreover, Tongan barkcloth was (Williams 1984: 49)—and still is—highly valued in Samoa. A number of Samoan motifs on siapo tasina such as dots, triangles, herringbone design, the vane swastika, plant designs, stars, and checkerboard patterns share equivalents in Tongan barkcloths. Elongated triangles do not seem to be a feature of Samoan barkcloth. Other motifs including wavy lines, rings, lozenges, and crescents do not appear on Tongan barkcloth of the late eighteenth to early nineteenth centuries and can therefore be classified as typically Samoan. It shows that Samoa did not solely rely on Tonga for its Tongan-style barkcloth, it also had a production of its own characterized by Samoan design and layout. However, a “Samoan” crescent shape appears on the barkcloth worn by “Fatafegui” of Tonga (Figure 2.4). Could she actually be wearing a Samoan barkcloth? Usually the exchange of barkcloth happened from Tonga to Samoa and not the other way around. What “Fatafegui” is wearing could be an exceptional example or could testify to some Samoan influence on material culture of Vava‘u. Tonga maintained particular exchange alliances with Fiji as well. Tonga received from Fiji canoes, sandalwood, feathers, spears, clubs, mats, sennit, mosquito nets (i.e., large barkcloths), pottery, and wooden bowls; Fiji received from Tonga mats, barkcloth, sennit, whale teeth, pearl shells inlaid with whale ivory, miniature white cowries and stingray barbs (Lessin and Lessin 1970: footnote 16). In 1777, Cook concludes that red feathers constitute one of the most important trade items arriving in Tonga from Fiji. He bases this on the Fijian material he saw in Tongatapu in 1777: The red feathers so often mentioned in the Narrative all come from Fidgee, as also some of their finest Striped and chequered Cloth and a few other articls [sic]. The demand for feathers is so great that it frequently occasions quarrels for if the people of Fidgee refuse to trade, the others rather than go without will fight for them, so at least I have been told. (Cook 1967: 163–164)

Kooijman (1972: 217) describes two methods used in decorating Samoan siapo: one consisted of pasting while rubbing a cloth over a design table; the other involved pasting the undecorated strips of barkcloth together in a large sheet, before painting freehand designs on it. The first type of barkcloth is called siapo tasina, while the freehand painted type is named siapo mamanu (Pritchard 1984: 47, 61). Krämer (1995: 354), however, describes three types of barkcloth: siapo tasina or red barkcloth, siapo uli or black barkcloth, and siapo mamanu or freehand painted barkcloth.

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Kaeppler (1978c: 248) writes that Fiji gave “husbands” and things associated with them such as canoes, wooden bowls, wooden head rests, slit gongs, and sandalwood. Those goods were not readily available in Tonga because of the lack of appropriate trees. Bruni d’Entrecasteaux (1808: 313–314) points out in 1793 that the confrontations between Tongans and Fijians did not stop them from exchanging objects: In spite of the frequent wars between the natives of the Friendly Islands and the inhabitants of Fedgi [Fiji], there are frequent communications between them as soon as the hostilities are over. From the Fedgi Islands, the inhabitants of the Friendly Islands obtain baked clay vases, the feathers of a species of red parrot, and sandalwood, which is found there in abundance. Numerous attempts were made to transplant sandalwood at Tongatabou; but either because of ignorance in the art of cultivation, or because the soil of the island is not suitable for growing this tree, all the attempts have failed. Fedgi also supplies to the Friendly Islands the stones which the inhabitants use to make up for the lack of iron in the fabrication of their axes and of all other sharp instruments which they use. I do not know which objects are given in exchange to the inhabitants of Fedgi.10 Tonga gave canoes, produce of the land, ngatu, mats, and turtle shell to all foreigners including Samoans, Fijians, and ‘Uveans. Focusing on barkcloth, I observe that Fijian nineteenth-century gatu vakatonga exceed the maximum width of Tongan and Samoan barkcloth. Fiji has the parallel lines (tatautuisipa in Tongan), dots, elongated triangles, herringbone pattern, and the star in common with Tongan ngatu. The use of elongated triangles (vakamata) is characteristic for Eastern Fijian barkcloth of the early nineteenthcentury period. This design only became popular during the latter half of the nineteenth century in Tongan barkcloths. It was possibly developed during the first half of the nineteenth century either in Tonga or in Eastern Fiji and then became fashionable in both places. Lozenges too are used. Fiji and Samoa have the lozenge shape in common. It seems that, even with the “mixed” gatu vakaviti, the designs are more closely related to Tonga than to Samoa.

Author’s translation from French: ‘Malgré les fréquentes guerres que les naturels des îles des Amis ont avec les habitants de Fedgi, dès que les hostilités sont finies, il y a entre eux de fréquentes communications. Les habitants des îles des Amis tirent des îles Fedgi des vases de terre cuite, des plumes d’une espèce de perroquet rouge, et du bois de sandal [sic], qui y est très-abondant. On a essayé plusieurs fois de transplanter le bois de sandal [sic] à Tongatabou; mais, soit ignorance dans l’art de la culture, soit que le sol de l’île ne convienne pas à cet arbre, toutes les tentatives ont été infructueuses. Fedgi fournit aux îles des Amis les pierres dont se servent les habitans [sic] pour suppléer au défaut de fer dans la fabrication de leurs haches et de tous les autres instrumens [sic] tranchans [sic] dont ils font usage. J’ignore quels sont les objets donnés en échange aux habitans [sic] de Fedgi’ (Bruni d’Entrecasteaux 1808: 313–314).

10

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Many Fijians portrayed are wearing Tongan-style barkcloth, which materializes Tonga’s presence in Fiji (Figure 4.7). It exemplifies “tonganification.” Thomas (1991: 80) in fact argues that “the most significant source of dynamism in the whole of

Figure 4.7  Ratu Apenisa Seru Cakobau, Vunivalu of Bau, c. 1874–5 wearing Tonganstyle barkcloth. P.103564. VH. Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology, University of Cambridge.

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Fiji during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was intensification of contact in Tonga, involving military interaction, trade, marriage alliance, and extensive cultural transfer of customs and articles of material culture.” It is known that around 1750 a few Tongans went to Lakeba (Lau, Fiji) and took part in local wars helping chiefs who rewarded them with large canoes of a kind not produced in Tonga.11 Tongans continued after that to go to Fiji in order to acquire these canoes together with better weapons, bows, and arrows made in Fiji (Derrick 2001: 121). An example of an important chief going to work in Fiji was Tu‘ihalafatai, the Tu‘i Kanokupolu12 who met Cook in 1777. These visits had devastating effects on Tongan society: Tongans returning to their countries brought with them plenty of “Fijian habits,” which because of their warlike character disrupted and finally uprooted Tongan life (Wood 1938: 25). This eventually led to the civil war of 1799. Wood (1938: 25) however does not discuss the reverse impact Tongans might have had on Lauan society. Tippett (1968: 9), who studied Fijian material culture, concludes that the Tongan influence certainly started in the eighteenth century. I propose that the presence of the Tongan-style barkcloth in Lau was one of the contributions Tongans brought to their new hosts. While the data pointing to women going to Fiji are extremely scarce, Tongan barkcloth style must have been brought by or through women. It can be surmised that ‘Uvea also fell within the Tongan sphere of influence. There are few ‘Uvean barkcloths with secure dates. However the pieces have the herringbone design and the dots in common with late eighteenth-century Tongan barkcloth. These motifs together with lozenges and triangles also occur on Samoan barkcloth. ‘Uvean barkcloth has the lozenge motif in common with Fijian barkcloth of the first half of the nineteenth century.

Imagining and forging the Tongan land When explorers come into contact with nineteenth-century barkcloth from Fiji and Samoa, they are confronted with a type of barkcloth that looks very similar to Tongan ngatu collected in the late eighteenth century. Evidently, Tongan-style barkcloth in other areas of Western Polynesia was well known. As archaeological research on barkcloth—the material does not last long in a tropical climate—is virtually impossible, I argue that barkcloth designs and techniques fossilize in a

From the late eighteenth century onward the indigenous Tongan canoe of the outrigger type (vaka) was supplanted by the more seaworthy vaka or hamatafua modeled on the Fijian canakau. In that same period the double-hull canoe (tongiaki) also fell out of use after the introduction of the more versatile kalia, copied from the Fijian drua (Haddon and Hornell 1936: 253ff). 12 The Tu‘i Kanokupolu title was established in the seventeenth century and gave political power to the person holding the title (Urbanowicz 1979: 228). 11

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way the relationship Tonga entertained with its neighboring area. Many scholars present this alliance as a Tongan empire extending over Samoa, Fiji, and smaller islands in Western Polynesia (Bellwood 1978: 69; Luders 1996: 303; Māhina 1990; Small 1997: 14). Other research points to a system of tributary (Gailey 1987a: 67; Poulsen 1987: 24, vol. 1) or even tyranny that the central place Tonga exercised over the periphery (Gifford 1929). Archaeologists concur, but stress the maritime aspect of the empire relationship (Irwin 1992: 202; Kirch 1988: 8–12, 24, 257–258). Kirch (2000: 304)—echoing the Tongan scholar Epeli Hau‘ofa (1993)— explains that the sea was seen as “a highway.” These seafaring voyages to other neighboring islands developed into a complex network of interconnections maintained by navigators who became transportation specialists (Kirch 2000: 304). The development of the fast outrigger “Fijian” canoes illustrates a close collaboration between the different Western Polynesian islands: made from Fijian timber, Tongan and ‘Uvean in shape, their rig was of Micronesian design and their builders from Tonga and Samoa. These canoes boosted inter-island travel even further (Clunie 2003: 15). The networks that developed in Western Polynesia became highly regularized. Others are more hesitant in terming Tonga an empire (Burley 1995: 169). The historian Campbell (2001: 32) directly challenges the notion of a Tongan empire and states: “The term ‘empire’ is ill-chosen, for it implies absolute power and direct government probably from Tonga itself. ‘Empire’ is a form of government that is not compatible with what is known of Tongan conventions, nor is it realistically consistent with the technology of the time.” Researchers have demonstrated by examining the origin—exotic or local—of stone tools that the Tonga polity extended into the Central Pacific, transgressing the traditionally posited Western Polynesian borders (Clark et al. 2014). Looking at the chiefly stone architecture such as the ones that are found in the villages of Heketa and Lapaha, archaeologists established that the Tongan state developed after 1200 AD and reached its acme between 1350 and 1400. While contacts with East Polynesia stopped around 1600, the Tongan system where neighboring islands offered tribute continued into the nineteenth century (Clark et al. 2014: 10494). Archaeological research, oral traditions, and ethnohistorical sources indicate a complex network of exchange activities and relations among the island groups of Western Polynesia with the Tongan archipelago occupying a central position. The concept of langa fonua (building the land/nation) is extremely useful in understanding the spreading of Tongan barkcloth in Western Polynesia. Addo (2013: 14), describing the diaspora relationship between New Zealand and Tonga, argues convincingly that Tongan women, wherever they are, engage in an ongoing exchange process that contributes to the augmentation (langa) of the nation. It seems reasonable to transpose the contemporary idea of langa fonua to an historical situation and assume that Tongan women at the height of Tongan power expanded and globalized their land by producing, gifting, and counter

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gifting barkcloth. It remains debatable to use the word “empire” in the sense that is defined by Petersen (2000) as the extent to which societies peripheral to some central or core place were integrated into an ongoing complex of interrelationships that not only involved the movement of goods—that is, economic exchange—but also entailed a range of social, cultural, and religious or ritual values that portrayed the population, or at least the leaders, of the central place as in some manner superordinate to the more remote island societies. The encounters with ngatu in Samoa and Fiji helped produce the nation with its expandable borders.

5 BETWEEN THE CROSS AND THE CLOTH All missions, Catholic and Protestant, were bedevilled—if this is the right word!—with the problem of how to bring universal truths clothed in culturally specific narratives across the beach. GREG DENING (2004: 114)

As Dening (2004: 114) expresses above in a condensed way, cloth and dress were the vehicle through which Christian ideas and values were transmitted and translated. This chapter deals explicitly with this convoluted relationship between Christian missionization and barkcloth. On June 10, 2003, the day of the church wedding of royal couple ‘Eiki Lupepau‘u and Hon. Matai‘ulua Fusitu‘a, the groom was waiting in the porch of the Free Wesleyan Centenary Church in Nuku‘alofa, the capital of Tonga at 10 am that morning. When the bride arrived in a limousine followed by white vans with twenty-two bride’s maids, twenty-two groom’s men, eight flower girls, and two ring bearers, one was dazzled by the grandness of this Western looking event. One item, however, marked the Tongan character of this Christian ceremony: the road to the church was covered with barkcloth, with women lining the pathway on both sides (Plate 21).1 For another church ceremony, the crowning of George Tupou V, the setup was similar. In August 2008, the future king, George Tupou V, was driven in a London taxi, from the Palace to the Free Wesleyan Centenary Church on a pathway made up of barkcloth (Plate 22). Not only does the earth get “dressed,” also people don barkcloth clothes during Christian occasions. Incorporated in formal dress, consisting of a layering of Western and Tongan-style clothing, barkcloth fosters a way of being in the world. Clearly, ngatu plays an important role in contemporary Tonga during Christian occasions. From the 1820s onward, Methodist and Catholic missionaries have been primordial in introducing European fabric, while at the Usually this barkcloth is given to the preacher as part of his “payment.” I did not witness whether this was the case for the 2003 Royal wedding.

1

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same time contributing both consciously and unconsciously to the perpetuation of barkcloth production and use.

Before missionary arrival Before the arrival of the missionaries in the first half of the nineteenth century, the use of barkcloth is attested as clothing, as supporting, wrapping, and pathway material, as an item of presentation and gift and other domestic uses including as a blanket (Anderson 1967: 911; Cook 1967: 140; Forster 1982: 547; Samwell 1967: 1025), a mosquito net (Wilkes 1845: vol. 3, 16), a sitting sheet (Cook 1967: 127), a room divider (Thomson 1968), a bandage to set a broken arm (Mariner 1827: vol. 1, 277), or during circumcision (Dillon 1829: vol. 1, 75), as a noose (Mariner 1827: vol. 1, 273, 300) and to mark taboo places (Dillon 1829: vol. 2, 60). However most historical sources discuss barkcloth as clothing (Cook 1967: 167–168; Schouten 1945 [1618]: 179–180), either as a loincloth (Sparrman 1953: 96; Tasman 1919: 58–59) or as a wrap-around skirt starting around people’s middle and reaching down below the knee. Both in ceremonies and in daily life, men and women wear the same type of skirt, only covering their upper bodies when feeling cold (Clerke 1967: 1302; Cook 1969: 266–267; Forster 1999: vol. 1, 410; Maurelle 1798: 372–373; Wales 1969: 809). The skirt is held in place with a coconut coir cord (Anderson 1967: 931). James Cook (1967: 167–168) describes 1777 Tongan clothing in great detail: Their clothing consists of Cloth, or Matting, but mostly the former, the dress of both men and Women is the same, and consists of one piece about two yards wide and two and a half long, or so long as to go once and a half round the waist, to which it is confind [sic] by a girdle or cord; it is double before and hangs down like a petticoat as low as the middle of the leg. The upper part of the garment above the girdle is plaited into several large folds, so that there is cloth sufficient when unfolded to come over the head but this is very seldom done. This as to form is the general dress, but large pieces of Cloth and fine Matting are only wore [sic] by the superior people, the inferior sort put up with small pieces and very often wear nothing but a petticoat made of the leaves of plants, or the Maro, which is a narrow piece of cloth or matting like a Sash, this they bring between the legs and wrap round the waist. In their great Haivas, or Dances they dress in various dresses which are made for the purpose but the method is always the same. Often barkcloth is combined with fine mats (Samwell 1967: 1041). Juan Ravenet, one of the draughtsmen accompanying Alejandro Malaspina on his voyage around the world, depicted in his “Indios de Vavao” (Indians of Vava‘u) two women and one man, who with their finely decorated barkcloth all belonged to the chiefly

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classes. The girls complement their barkcloth dress with a woven mat, while the boy is wearing a large shell pendant around his neck (Figure 5.1). In fact, in Tonga barkcloth and mats are often interchangeable. Sometimes mats are even more valuable than a bale of barkcloth. Phillis Herda (1999) and Kerry James (1988b) rightly treat barkcloth and fine mats together in their respective articles. However, barkcloth and fine mats were and still are not totally interchangeable.

Figure 5.1  “Indios de Vavao,” Indians of Vava‘u. This image shows three Tongans dressed up in decorated barkcloth and fine mats. Drawn by Juan Ravenet, 21.8 × 18.5 cm (Sotos Serrano 1982: 250, fig. 787). © Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid.

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While bales of barkcloth were considered appropriate to lay the corpse on before being buried (Anderson 1967: 947; Dumont d’Urville 1832b: 318) and to wrap the dead body in, ngatu as clothing during funerals was and is frowned upon (Mariner 1827: vol. 1, 134, 311). On the other hand, ngatu was suitable wrapping for brides (Mariner 1827: vol. 1, 122–123) and as a pathway for important people: As they were little accustomed to the appearance of strangers, they were greatly surprised at the sight of so large a canoe, and considered this chief and his men as hotooas [‘Otuas] (gods) or superior beings, and would not suffer them to land, till they had spread on the ground a large roll of gnatoo [ngatu], which extended about fifty yards, reaching from the shore to the house prepared for them. (Mariner 1827: vol. 1, 260)2 Late eighteenth-century accounts point out as a general rule that Tongan hou‘eiki (high ranking Tongans) wore large pieces of colored and patterned barkcloth, often combined with a mat wrapped around their loins. Tu‘a (low ranking) people, especially women, wore similar uncolored loincloths, a waist mat or a girdle made of si3 leaves. Barkcloth is still the exchange item by excellence. Late eighteenth-century accounts reveal that Tongans repeatedly approached European ships to give or exchange barkcloth with the sailors (Anderson 1967: 902; Cook 1967: 108; Forster 1999: vol. 1, 244; La Billardière 1800: 346). Often barkcloth was used to make political alliances (Mariner 1827: vol. 1, 80–81). Mariner explains how a certain exchange rate existed: “If a man, …, has more yams than he wants, let him exchange some of them away for pork or gnatoo” (Mariner 1827: vol. 1, 213). Before the arrival of missionaries, barkcloth played an essential role in gifting practices as it helped forging peaceful relationships with people that were considered of higher rank than the giver.

Missionary failure and uncertainties, 1797–1827 The largest Christian denomination in Tonga is still the Wesleyan Methodist Church with 38 percent of the population adhering to it. By 2006, the Church

The idea of (high-ranking) people who are instantiating a god on a particular occasion will be discussed later in this chapter.

2

Whistler (1991: 110) describes si as “Cordyline fruticosa, the aboriginally introduced ti plant common in cultivation as an ornamental and naturalized in forests.”

3

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of the Latter Day Saints (17 percent) had pushed the Roman Catholic Church (16 percent) from a second to a third position (Lolohea 2008: 32–33).4 Tongan missionary history can be divided in a first period from 1797 until 1827 when missionaries met with difficulties and even failure; and a second period extending to 1860, when all the inhabitants of the Tongan archipelago are converted (Douaire-Marsaudon 2008a: 168). While the Wesleyans and Catholics now form the traditional Churches of Tonga, they were not the first to set out missionizing. On April 12, 1797, a group of ten missionaries arrived in Tonga, sent out by the London Missionary Society (LMS), that had been created in 1795 by a group of evangelically spirited Protestants from a variety of denominations, strongly biased toward Calvinism, with as first target the Pacific (Duriez-Toutain 1995: 9). Originally named the Missionary Society, the LMS was founded by Thomas Hawaeis (1734–1820) who wanted to evangelize France, which—according to Hawaeis—had turned away from God through the French revolution. However, the stories read in voyager accounts awoke in Thomas Hawaeis a fascination for Tahiti. So much so that in 1787, eight years before creating the LMS he had already sent a proposal to the Admiralty to have missionaries join Bligh’s voyage on the Bounty. As his request arrived too late Thomas Hawaeis made another attempt, this time to accompany Bligh on his second voyage in the Providence. Because of a dearth of missionary candidates, he had to retract the missionary project (Laux 2008: 28–29). Finally, in 1796, enough money was raised to deliver missionaries to Tahiti, the Marquesas, and Tonga traveling on the Duff under Captain James Wilson. None of the ten young missionaries—Daniel Bowell, John Buchanon, James Cooper, James Gaulton, Samuel Harper, Seth Kelso, Isaac Nobbs, William Shelley, George Vason, and James Wilkinson5—who arrived in Hihifo, the western district of Tongatapu on April 12, 1797, had received any formal education, which would help them to effectively spread the message among the heathen population (Campbell 2001: 63; Wilson 1799: 5–6). Despite their

The remaining 29 percent of the Tongan population is affiliated to—in decreasing order—the Free Church of Tonga (11 percent), the Church of Tonga (7 percent), Tokaikolo (3 percent), Seventh Day Adventist (2 percent), Assembly of God (2 percent), not stated (