Family and Gender in the Pacific: Domestic Contradictions and the Colonial Impact 0521346673, 9780521346672

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FAMILY AND GENDER IN THE PACIFIC

FAMILY AND GENDER IN THE PACIFIC Domestic contradictions and the colonial impact

E DITE D BY

MAR GARET JOLL Y AND MART HA MAC INT YRE

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C A M B R I D G E U N I V E R S IT Y P R E S S C A MBR I DGE N E W Y O RK

NEW ROCHELLE

M E LBOUR N E

SYD N E Y

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, New York, Melboune, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Slo Paulo, Delhi, Dubai, Tokyo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Inormation on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521131773

© Cambridge University Press 1989 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 1989 This digitally printed version 2010

A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Libray National Library of Australia Cataloguing in Publication data Family and gender in the Paciic. Bibliography Includes index. ISBN 0 521 34667 3. 1. Family - Pacific Area. 2. Women - Pacific Area. 3. Sex role Pacific Area. 4. Missions - Pacific Area. 5. Pacific Area Social lie and customs. 6. Paciic Area - Colonial inluence. I. Jolly, Margaret, 1949-. II. Macintyre, Martha. 306.8'099

Libray of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data Family and gender in the Pacific. Bibliography. Includes index.

I. Family - Oceania. 2. Women - Oceania. 3. Missions - Oceania. 4. Acculturation - Oceania. 5. Oceania Social life and customs. I. Jolly, Margaret. II. Macintyre, Martha. GN663.F36 1989

306.8'099

88-25834

ISBN 978-0-521-34667-2 Hardback ISBN 978-0-521-13177-3 Paperback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs or external or third-party internet websites reerred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

CONT ENT S

List of contributors Acknowledgements Map of main island groups of the Paci.c Map of Papua New Guinea - Provinces

l

2

3

Introduction M A C I NTYRE

M A RGARET JO L L Y A N D M A RTHA

19

Changes in the lives of ordinary women in early postcontact Hawaii C A R O L I N E R A L STON

45

Domestic structures and polyandry in the Marquesas Islands N I CH O L A S TH O M A S

65

The object lesson of a civilised, Christian home D I A N E L A N GM O R E

5

Medical care and gender in Papua New Guinea D O N A LD D E N O O N

7 8

l

New England missionary wives, Hawaiian women and ' The Cult of True Womanhood ' P A TR I C I A GR I M S H A W

4

6

page vii xi xii xiii

95

Sufer the children : Wesleyans in the D'Entrecasteaux M I C H A E L W. YOUNG

108

Women in contemporary Central Enga society, Papua New Guinea M. J. M EGGITT

135

Better homes and gardens M A RTHA M A C I N T Y R E

156

v

vi 9 10

God, ghosts and people : Christianity and social organisation among Takuru Wiru JE F F REY C LA RK

170

Sins of a mission : Christian lie as Kwaio traditionalist ideology R OGER M. K E E SING

193

11

Sacred spaces : churches, men's houses and households in South Pentecost, Vanuatu

I2

M A RGARET JO LLY

213

Bond-slaves of Satan : Aboriginal women and the missionary dilemma A N N ETTE H AM ILTO N

236

Bibliography

259

Index

281

CONTR I BUTOR S

JE F F R E Y C L A RK is a Tutor in Anthropology at the University of Adelaide. His research interests are ocussed on the consequences of Christianity and development or Papua New Guineans. in particular, or the Wiru people of Pangia in the Southern Highlands Province where he has conducted ieldwork since 1980. D O N A L D D E N O O N was born in Scotland, brought up in South Arica, studied at Natal University and Cambridge, taught history in Uganda, Ibadan University, Nigeria, and the University of Papua New Guinea. He is now a Senior Research Fellow at the Australian National University, researching the social history of Papua New Guinea, and this will soon be published by CUP. His general interest is in comparative history.

P A TR I c I A GR I M s H A w teaches American history and women's

history at the University of Melbourne. Her publications include Women's Sufrage in New Zealand. She has co-edited Australian Women: Feminist Perspectives, The Half-Open Door, and Families in Colonial Australia. She has recently completed a ull-length study of American mission women in Hawaii.

A N N ETTE H A M I L TO N is Professor of Anthropology and Comparative Sociology at Macquarie University in Sydney. She has carried out extensive ieldwork in North and Central Australia, and archival and library research on the history and sociology of British settler colonies. vii

viii

M ARGA R ET JO L L Y is a Senior Lecturer in Anthropology and Comparative Sociology at Macquarie University in Sydney, where she teaches about Melanesia, Paciic colonialism and women and development. She studied anthropology and history at Sydney University. She is currently writing a book about women and the colonial history of Vanuatu, and will work on a broader comparison of house orms, political hierarchies and domestic lie in the Paciic as a Research Fellow in Anthropology. ANU in 1989. She is the author of several papers dealing with the ethnography of Vanuatu and the analysis of gender in Melanesia. R OGER K E ESING is Professor of Anthropology at the Australian National University, and has done ield research among the Kwaio of Solomon Islands and in the Indian Himalayas. His books include Cultural Anthropology: A Contemporary Perspective, Kin Groups and Social Structure, Lightning Meets the West Wind: The Malaita Massacre, Kwaio Religion, Elota's Story, Kwaio Dictionary. Kwaio Grammar. D I A N E L A NGM O R E is a research editor for the Australian Dictionary of Biography. and has lived and worked in Papua New Guinea from l 964 to l 976. Author of Tamata - a King: James Chalmers in New Guinea, her Missionaries in Papua: A Group Portrait is to be published by University of Hawaii Press in 1989.

M A RTHA M A CI N TY R E is a lecturer in the Sociology Department, La Trobe University, Australia. Compiling a bibliography of The Kula inducted her into the ethnography of the Massim area, Papua New Guinea. A teacher and historian beore she turned to anthropology, she was educated at the University of Melbourne, Cambridge and the Australian National University. Her ieldwork was carried out on the small island of Tubetube and she has published numerous articles based on her research there. M E R V Y N M EGGI T T is Professor of Anthropology at Queens College of The City University of New York. He was educated at the University of Sydney. His major works include Desert People: A

Study of the Walbiri Aborigines of Central Australia, The Lineage System of the Mae Enga in New Guinea and Studies in Enga History. He has published many jounal articles on the Enga over a period of thirty years.

ix CAR O L INE RALSTON a senior lecturer in Histoy at Macquarie University, teaches Paciic, women's and Aboriginal history. Her long-term research project is to write a history of changing patterns of gender relations in Polynesia from pre-contact times to the 1 9 Bos. Recently she has jointly edited with Nicholas Thomas, and written the introduction or, a special issue of The Journal of Paciic History, 22 ( 1 9 8 7), entitled, Sanctity and Power: Gender in Polynesian History. N 1 c Ho LA s TH o MA s is a Research Fellow in Cultural Anthropology at King's College, Cambridge. Apart from ield research in the Marquesas he has done archival research in France, Italy, Britain. the United States, Australia and French Polynesia on Polynesian history. His current research interests include exchange, early Fijian societies and theoretical aspects of the relation between history and anthropology. M I CHAEL YOUNG is a Senior Fellow in the Department of Anthropology, Research School of Paciic Studies, at the Australian National University. Born in Manchester, England, he studied anthropology at University College, London, and The Australian National University, and taught at Cambridge. He has done ield­ work in Papua New Guinea and, most recently. in Vanuatu. His major publications include Fighting with Food, The Ethnography of Malinowski, Magicians of Manumanua, and Malinowski among the Magi: ' The Natives of Mailu '.

ACKNO W L ED G E M ENT S

The editors thank the Anthropology Department of the Research School of Paciic Studies, The Australian National University, or the institutional and inancial support given to this project. Many of the essays originated as papers for the conference ' Christianity. Colonialism and the Family in the Paciic ' held in Canberra in December I 9 8 3, as part of the workshop on gender relations in the southwest Paciic I 98 3- I 9 84. Also our special thanks to Marilyn Little for her excellent editing and handling of the proofs of this volume.

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INTRODUCT ION

M A R G A R E T J OLLY A N D MARTHA MACIN TY R E

Paciic historians and anthropologists have long observed and commented upon the dramatic social and political changes that have occurred in response to colonial intrusion and paciication. As they describe the demise of indigenous political systems or the upheavals concomitant with new orms of economic activity there is often the implicit assumption that certain core institutions persist or that essential cultural characteristics are retained. In the Australian context, Aborigines, and even those who oppose their struggle or autonomy, subscribe to an idealised view of the desert or the •outback' as the true locus of traditional continuity. The nomadic band of hunter-gatherers subsisting on their country is an image so compelling that it obscures the harsh realities of poverty both in large cities and rural regions and the acts of land alienation and cultural displacement. Similarly the idea of the unchanging village is as comorting to anthropologists as it is to many urban peoples in Paciic nations. The relative simplicity and monotonous regularity of quotidian activities in rural regions is seen to set them apart rom the complexities and ast changes of the urban centres. And while some view outback Aborigines or Paciic villagers as those deprived of the beneits of technological and cultural advances, condemned to underdevelopment in remote backwaters, others see them as the guardians of custom, the true defenders of tradition. Both views ail to acknowledge how rural life has changed at its very core and that these processes of change began a long time ago. Crucial to this presumption of an unchanging cultural core is a view of domestic lie as always the same. In this volume of essays we challenge this notion, exploring the dramatic and spectacular I

2

F A M I L Y A N D GENDER I N THE P A C I F I C

changes in domestic life throughout the Paciic. I n varying ways and with varying degrees of regret, ethnographic chauvinism and moral outrage, the contributors contest the romantic notion of an unchanging domestic lie that was untouched by colonialism. We look particularly at the ways in which Europeans introduced new ideas about the amily and relations between the sexes. We select as areas of concern those aspects of domestic life which were fundamentally altered - the values that centre on kinship, patterns of marriage, the division of labour, residential patterns, eating and sleeping arrangements and the care of children and the sick. But charting such changes involves a prior understanding of what we mean by •domestic life', and if recent comparative scholarship has demonstrated anything it is that •domestic' and •family' are very slippery terms indeed (Harris 1981 ; Rosaldo and Lamphere 1974 ; Yanagisako 1979). What appears as an acceptable deinitional or descriptive use, contrasting domestic and public for instance, emerges as inadequate or misleading in another context. It appears unexceptional to describe a domestic unit as a group of people who live together in the same dwelling, who cooperate in producing and consuming ood and who conceive of themselves as closely related according to the precepts of kinship and marriage that obtain in that community. The domesticity of such arrangements derives not only rom the residential forms but rom the activities which at irst may appear as similar to Western or European patterns (cf. Illich 1982). However, as European observers have discovered, there were orms of domesticity in the Paciic which did not accord with Western models at all. For instance many Europeans were horriied by the lack of a clearly demarcated household dwelling or family orm among the Australian Aborigines. Foraging dictated a nomadic existence in most habitats and Aboriginal settlements were thus temporary settlements with limsy shelters at most. Moreover although close kin tended to cluster together in one camp, and around one hearth or camp ire, these close kin were not necessarily a nuclear family let alone a family enjoying a privatised existence. Hamilton (1979, 1980) has shown how the economic relations surrounding food production, distribution and consumption did not privilege the relation of husband, wie and children. And Bell has noted (1983), or Warrabri at least, the continuity of the separate women's camp where single, widowed and married women not presently wanting to camp with their husbands lived around a separate hearth.

I N TRODUCT I O N

3

In Melanesian communities, where men lived together in separate houses while women and children lived in smaller dwellings, where was the family or 'domestic life' located? Men in such houses often cooperated in work, ate and slept together, and deined themselves as a group of agnates. Is the men's house then as much a domestic locus as the houses of women and children? Some have portrayed these men's houses as the locus of public life, and yet their exclusivist and secret character makes such a depiction hardly appropriate. And in all those Paciic societies where the relationship with the departed ancestors is intimate. continuing and central to the social and cosmological ordering of daily life, are the ancestors 'family'? We have not adopted a constraining deinition of 'domestic' or the ·family' from the outset, precisely because it would compromise the arguments implicit in this essay in comparison and obviate the discovery that in some societies the ordering of daily life is not familial at all. In charting the transformations of domestic life in the Paciic we must acknowledge the multiaceted and often contradictory pres­ sures which colonialism exerted. Everywhere colonialism had enormous efects. but these were regionally variable and rarely unitary. Rather than presuming the fatal impact of a monolithic colonialism we have tried to scrutinise the complexities of colonial processes. We examine therefore the alienation of land, the appropriation of labour. the introduction of European goods and modes of work, the expansion of colonial states and the inluence of Christian missions. This is not to suggest that the •economic', the •political' and the •religious' aspects of colonialism are unrelated. They clearly converge in powerful ways. Christian theology provided justiication for some colonial oicials and even some labour recruiters who thought they, like the missionaries. were rescuing Paciic peoples rom their benighted state of savagery. Christian missions imparted not just novel religious notions but new modes of economic and political relation. The daily discipline of work was as much cultivated on missions as on plantations or cattle stations. But the interests of the various colonial agents were not necessarily uniied. There were important bases of conflict. and several of our contributors illustrate divergence and opposition within the colonial regime. Sexual relations between indigenous women and foreign men emerge as a requent source of such conflicts. Missionaries generally opposed such liaisons as immoral or exploitative. However, as Ralston and Hamilton reveal. this is only one side of a debate.

4

F A M I L Y A N D GENDER I N T H E P A C I F I C

Ralston re-examines the early relations between Hawaiian women and European sailors - liaisons which were severely condemned by Christian evangelists from the r 82os onwards as both' promiscuous ' and 'prostitution '. She queries such appraisals not only because they are rooted in a repressive and patriarchal Christian morality but because they obscure the purposes of the women concerned. In this early period their motivation was most likely to secure intimate access to the divine and material powers of these invading gods and to perpetuate this by bearing a child (cf. Sahlins 1981b:40). Hamilton reports a similar conflict between missionaries and other white male settlers in early Australian colonial history (Chapter 12). By Hamilton's account, Australian evangelicals were as much concerned to rescue Aboriginal women rom the degradations of relations with white men as from their degraded state under Aboriginal male control. To this end the missions routinely segregated and oversaw Aboriginal women in mission settlements and chose suitable husbands for them. Again what is often overlooked in this process is how Aboriginal women themselves perceived the indigenous patterns of bestowal and how far they were coerced or willingly entered into unions with white men. Clearly such unions were frequent despite missionary interventions. This is evidenced by the number of part-Europeans in the Aboriginal population and by what the missionaries called that other ·testimony of vice', the rapid spread of venereal disease in the Aboriginal population after contact. Throughout Melanesia women's sexuality was equally safe­ guarded by missionaries who came into open conflict with traders, planters and labour recruiters whom they saw as stealing local women and subjecting them to .licentious degradation. Vehement missionary critics of the labour trade, such as the Presbyterians of southern Vanuatu, saw women not as willing recruits but as sexual slaves exposed to the ravages of both black labourers and white masters on plantations. Again this missionary stereotype needs critical reappraisal (cf. Jolly 1987). It must already be obvious that Christian missionaries deserve particular scrutiny in any study of domestic transormations in the Paciic. This is why they igure so prominently in this volume, and we will discuss the reasons for this in a moment. But this focus is not to the exclusion of other colonial personae. Hamilton weighs the inluence of the missions against the influence of other white settlers

I N T RODUCT I O N

5

in Australia - be they property owners or labourers. Young and Macintyre both credit the importance of the labour trade in changes in the Massim region of Papua New Guinea. Ralston and Thomas look at the impact of early navigators in Hawaii and the Marquesas. And three papers in the volume can be seen to go far beyond the particular focus on missions. Denoon (Chapter 5) concentrates his attention on the medical system of colonial Papua New Guinea, including both the mission and the government establishments. As Denoon demonstrates the missionaries were as much engaged in saving lives as saving souls, and they preceded the colonial state in both Papua and New Guinea in the provision of medical care. When governments did get interested it was primarily in the treatment of male patients who were engaged as plantation labourers, while it was left to missions to retain their central concern with women and children, a concern of crucial importance given the alarmingly high rates of infant and maternal mortality. In the context of both mission and government systems Denoon shows how the gender hierarchy of the medical establishment provided particular models or indigenous people. Until World War II expatriate males predominated as doctors, indigenous males as orderlies, and medical assistants and expatriate females as nurses. The expansion of maternal and child health nursing and nutrition after the war increased the opportunities for local women in the medical system, but female personnel were still seen as under the direction of doctors who were both male and white. Although Denoon does not comment on this it is interesting to ponder how the familial model of male doctor as ather and female nurse as mother which saturates our own medical system is absorbed in a colonial medical system such as that of Papua New Guinea. Meggitt, in his study of Enga women (Chapter 7), presents a rounded portrait of the impact of colonial and post-colonial history. In his view, Enga women were excluded from traditional Enga politics and lived a severely circumscribed existence. Alien Europeans rarely addressed themselves to Enga women directly, and both church and state agencies tended to ignore their speciic problems and to relegate them to the garden. Men were encouraged to participate in new agricultural projects and to become wage labourers to the exclusion of women. Yet in spite of oicial neglect Enga women were able to assert themselves in new cofee-growing

6

F A M I L Y A N D GENDER I N T H E P A C I F I C

and ood-marketing projects rom the I 96os onwards. Control over their meagre proits and the sociability of the marketing business provided a new and relatively independent arena for women. However Meggitt sees these small advances on the economic ront as no compensation for the disruptions that followed changes in sexual mores and pattens of sexual segregation, changes which we discuss further below. Thomas, in his study of polyandry in the Marquesas (Chapter 3). situates the work of earlier anthropologists in the colonial context. He suggests that talking about polyandry engages a set of Western presumptions about sex and domesticity. and that Marquesan polyandry thus appears not only as a oreign but also as a threatening form of domesticity. Such presumptions can be ound in earlier analyses such as those of Linton and Kardiner (Kardiner I 939) who tend to explain away the institution as deriving from a numerical disparity between the sexes. This alleged sex imbalance is challenged by attention to early sources and it is claimed that. in so far as it is reported or certain regions in a later period, that it was an efect of contact rather than an indigenous pattern deriving from female infanticide, or example. Portraying an efect of contact as an eternal tradition is a likely outcome of the ahistorical and asystemic view of Polynesia adopted by the anthropologists of the Bishop Museum. They may have made an even more fundamental error in viewing this institution as a form of marriage at all. It is. Thomas argues. better understood as a form of domestic servitude whereby low-ranking landless men entered into relations of service with high­ ranking wealthy women in exchange for food, shelter and protection. So in these various chapters the focus shifts beyond missionaries to the broader context of Paciic colonialism. but in most of the essays in this volume they are given especial prominence. This is justiiable or several reasons. First. the work of Christian missions was particularly important in the colonial history of the Paciic. most especially where there were few other white settlers or where the colonial state was weak. Second. in most regions missionaries were the most sedentary of white settlers. Unlike colonial oicials or labour recruiters they exerted a continuous rather than an episodic influence. Unlike other sedentary whites, such as planters and traders. they were strongly committed to acquiring local knowledge and learning local languages and not just a lingua franca. It is abundantly clear from the writings of Paciic missionaries from the

I NTRODUCT I O N

7

early nineteenth century onwards that learning languages was seen as essential to spreading the word of God. Attaining oral luency, committing unwritten languages to writing and eventually printing texts of the gospels or catechisms were seen as crucial steps in the process of conversion and the consolidation of mission power. Some interesting diferences emerge between the denominations in both the longevity of their sojourns and their commitment to learning indigenous languages. Langmore, reporting on the our missions operating in Papua before 1914 (Chapter 4), notes that Catholics and Anglicans tended to stay longer and were more zealous about acquiring local languages than the LMS and the Wesleyan missionaries. She associates this with a more liberal attitude on the part of both Catholics and Anglicans towards local traditions. She does however acknowledge that prior education and class origin also shaped such liberalism - the Catholics and Anglicans tended to be more highly educated and come from a more elevated middle-class position than their LMS and Wesleyan counterparts. As well as the longevity and local engagement of the missionaries, a third crucial fact makes them key igures in the charting of domestic transformations in the Paciic - that is, they were self­ conscious agents of change. Other Europeans may have hoped for alterations in indigenous domesticities, but it was missionaries who articulated the need to reform the amily and who actively intervened to promote such changes. This did not mean that their plans were always clear and consistent. For instance Young suggests (Chapter 6) that the Wesleyan programme in the D'Entrecasteaux region of Papua New Guinea was, despite the martial metaphors, less a coherent campaign than an expression of misty ideals and incomprehensions. He poses the important question as to how we uncover missionary ideals and intentions. The sources available range from policy statements made at church conferences or governing bodies, through the prosyletising literature of pamphlets, journals, public letters and biographies of missionaries to the more intimate genres of daily diaries, journals and private letters. Given the taste many early missionaries had for writing, this constitutes a voluminous corpus, and our contributors might be seen to have sampled this for particular times and places. The immediacies of daily diaries and private letters reveal most clearly how policies were translated into practice and how optimistic

8

F A M I L Y A N D GENDER I N THE P A C I F I C

intentions were recast as practical strategies. These were often wildly variant. Grimshaw shows both here and elsewhere (Grimshaw 1983) how the New England missionary wives in Hawaii imported models of domesticity both at variance with the realities of their own households and those of the Hawaiians they had managed to convert. Indigenous domestic lie was predicated on principles of kinship, sexual relation and work organisation which difered radically rom a Christian marriage between a dominant providing husband and a submissive dependent wife. As these women of New England themselves had problems in attaining their ideals of true womanhood, it is hardly surprising that Hawaiian women had even greater diiculties with such early attempts to recreate them as Christian wives. The Hawaiian example also highlights the problematic relation between ideals of domesticity and the actual models which Christian missions presented. Here there is an intriguing contrast between the diferent denominations - the Catholics and Anglicans or the most part being represented by sex-segregated communities of priests and nuns, the Protestants or the most part by the married couple. Langmore suggests that although priests and nuns were more segregated they, paradoxically, often presented a less-diferentiated model of male and emale activity. Both nuns and missionary wives were crucial in imparting European models of housewifery teaching cooking, laundry, sewing and infant care. Both were also teachers of writing and scripture, nurses, and sometime gardeners and storekeepers. But the work of nuns seems in general less conined to the more domestic of these tasks. However as Jolly suggests, on the basis of research in Vanuatu (Chapter II), all missions stressed the separation of male and female spheres and ultimately devalued women's activities as auxilliary to those of the male missionary /priest. The national origin of missionaries also deserves some attention. Throughout the Paciic there are important ethnic diferences between missionaries by period, place and denomination. In some places missionaries rom Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand predominated - or example, in the early Protestant missions of Polynesia (see Grimshaw and Ralston, Chapters land 2), and still in the Marist missions of Vanuatu and the Solomons (see Jolly and Keesing, Chapters IO and II; cf. Boutillier et al. 1978). Polynesian converts became missionaries and teachers in many parts of

I N T R O DUCT I O N

9

Melanesia (for the Massim see Young and Macintyre, Chapters 6 and 8). Elsewhere local people were very early encouraged to become clergy and teachers - for instance the Melanesian Mission in Vanuatu (see Chapter II). As Jolly argues, in her essay on South Pentecost, these diferences are very important in assessing the local relevance of the models presented. This does not mean that an indigenous clergy necessarily increased the propensity or local imitations, since many Paciic peoples were in fact aspiring to become 'like Europeans', but it does indicate how far these changes in family life were seen as alien or indigenous transformations. What then were the speciic changes in domestic life which the missions sought and how did these changes ensue? In these very diferent locales throughout the Paciic the Christian churches were promoting a fairly consistent view about the sanctity of the Christian amily and the appropriate relations between women and men. These were, as we shall see, idealised visions rather than realistic memories of the dominant modes of domesticity at home. What aspects of indigenous domestic lie they took exception to and what reorms were seen as necessary to creating a decent family life varied between the diferent regions of the Paciic. In Polynesia there were many causes or alarm, as Ralston, Grimshaw and Thomas report. The missionaries in Hawaii, expecting perhaps to see women in the state of savagery as beasts of burden, were shocked by the idleness of women, and thus tried to inculcate the value of work though the elaboration of wifely duties. In both Hawaii and the Marquesas the power of women and, in particular, high-ranking women caused great concern, and the several missions tried to make women behave with more appropriate modesty and to show greater obedience to their husbands. Particularly worrisome was the practice of polyandry in the Marquesas whereby high­ ranking women took secondary husbands or pekio. This institution ofended both because it suggested emale power and female sexual appetite. Throughout Polynesia indeed the vaunting of the pleasure of heterosexual relations and procreation had perorce to give way to Christian restraint and repression in such matters. Here too the system of restrictions on movement, sexuality and eating, known variously as kapu or tapu, was early opposed by missionaries, although as we later see this was based on a radical mistranslation of the indigenous meanings of such segregations. Similar patterns of segregation occasioned missionary disapproval

IO

F A M I L Y AND GENDER IN THE P A C I F I C

and interventions in Melanesia. The segregation of dwellings and of cooking ires on the basis of rank and gender in north Vanuatu, as reported by Jolly, and the seclusion of women during menstruation and childbirth in Malaita, as described by Keesing, were likewise opposed because they seemed a transparent sign of women's exclusion and inferiority. Such interventions, as we later argue, involved some misunderstanding of the ancestral religion. Missions in all areas disapproved of the ways in which children were nurtured, seeing parental engagement with children as deicient or lacking in discipline. But in the D'Entrecasteaux region of Papua New Guinea there was an even more spectacular instance of the failure of family love, that is, the routine killing of infants whose mothers had died in childbirth and the mutilation of children in memory of dead adults. Young demonstrates how the Wesleyans used this motif of rescuing the children in und-raising and also how this was part of a broader mission strategy which set children against their parents. The wider programme or change in this region also entailed the mission regulation of courtship and marriage with the outlawing of polygyny in particular, the diversion of wealth and labour to the mission and the subversion of the traditional patterns of exchange and leadership. Equally spectacular patterns of intervention are reported by Macintyre (Chapter 8), or the short-lived Wesleyan mission on Tube­ tube, also in the Massim region. Here missionary eforts to promote Christian domesticity had to confront pre-existing forms of kinship association and forms of housing which placed value on the clan or lineage rather than the nuclear amily. The large communal clan houses were seen as a threat, and were burned down by the Polynesian teachers of the Wesleyan mission. These houses were ossuaries for skulls both of ancestors and enemies and were thus seen as signs both of satanic worship and of cannibalism. They were also important signs of the power of the guyau, or lineage head, hence burning the houses was also a challenge to this pattern of leadership. A more recent and subtle process in Wesleyan erosion of wider kinship forms is reported or the Takuru Wiru of the highlands of Papua New Guinea. Clark notes (Chapter 9) how a new Christian deinition of the group based on church ailiation and attendance supplants the old deinitions rooted in cult activity. Christians have opposed many such rituals and exchanges, especially those at death. Ancestral powers have been redeined as satanic, and the indigenous

I NTRODUCT I O N

II

beliefs in procreation and the appropriate relation of male and female also undermined by Christian theology of the body and soul. In Australia Hamilton suggests. on the basis of the early Evangelical literature, that the missionaries found the Aborigines degraded and their family life so debased that it was barely capable of reform. Thus, rather than reforming families on an appropriate Christian model and cultivating Christian ideals of parental nurture, Aboriginal children were often taken from their parents and segregated in mission dormitories or schools. Such institutions also existed in Polynesia and Melanesia, where parental love was also seen as deicient or debased. But in Australia these asylums co­ existed with a pattern of extreme land alienation and a policy of cultural denigration and assimilation which had almost genocidal efects. Aborigines survived, however, and the missions had perforce to reorm these survivors. Here too they tried to assert control over sexuality and marriage - outlawing polygyny in many areas and the gerontocratic control of marriages in some places. They also endeavoured to transform women's work life rom the communal and autonomous regime of gathering to the conined and supervised work of domestic service. In all these cases we must still ask how the changes in indigenous lie ensued. The link between missionary desires, actual mission models and perceived changes in Paciic domesticity is not a direct chain of causation. In some accounts, not least the self-appraisals of missionaries, their influence is rendered in such a way as to seem miraculous. It is said that missionaries stopped inanticide, outlawed traditional rites or exchanges. ended polygyny and abolished the kapu system. when what is meant is that Paciic peoples stopped such practices. The miraculous connection of missionary edicts and indigenous changes seems especially antastic in those times and places where missionaries were isolated and powerless. Of course there were some instances of church policy being backed up by coercive action, either on the part of the missionaries themselves (such as the burning of the clan houses on Tubetube by Polynesian Wesleyans) or on the part of the colonial authorities (such as the gunboat support of the Presbyterian Paton on Tanna, Vanuatu (Adams 1984)). But. more routinely. change implied some measure of willing cooperation on the part of local people. This was not unconstrained self-determination since such changes were made in the wider context of colonial relations. Embracing a new god can

12

F A M I L Y A N D GE N D E R IN THE P A C I F I C

thus never be dissociated rom the invasion and alienation of Paciic territories, the appropriation of labour, the introduction of new tools and orms of wealth and, perhaps even more telling, the spread of European diseases in epidemic proportions. But it was often an embrace and not just a capitulation to the fatal impact of missionary presence. The agency of Paciic peoples cannot be denied in the processes of colluding with. adapting to and resisting the Christian missions. How such changes ensued often depended on how diferent categories of the local population responded. Extremes of collusion and resistance radically divided Paciic populations into congeries of pro-Christian and anti-Christian groups. This is apparent in the early colonial history of Polynesia, and still persists in parts of Melanesia today - witness the divisions of kastom and skul in Vanuatu and the Solomons (see Jolly and Keesing). How such divisions emerged and persisted is intimately related to the indigenous political system, and we might ask how Christian missions responded to and used the very diferent polities of Polynesia, Melanesia and Aboriginal Australia. At the most general level it is clear that they exploited the pre-existing divisions in the population - between chiefly and non-chiefly, influential and marginal. men and women, old and young. Spriggs has recently suggested that, whereas conversion in Polynesia might proceed by winning over the chiefly or high-ranking, in more decentralised polities in Melanesia a mission had to establish a ' school in every district' (a speciic reerence to Geddie's strategy on Aneityum in southern Vanuatu (Spriggs 1985)). This process was even more dispersed in Aboriginal Australia given both the relative autonomy of Aboriginal bands and the way in which the colonial authorities dispensed territories to the respective missions, as Hamilton reports. Several essays in this volume consider the way in which the missions approached the division between women and men. Throughout the Paciic Christian missions took exception to the indigenous position of women and saw Christianity as improving their lot. Without exception these ine intentions were conounded by misunderstandings of the ancestral religion and by the patriarchal patterns of Christianity itself. For Hawaii, both Ralston and Grimshaw report a process whereby missionary attempts to improve women's position loundered because of fundamental misunder­ standings about indigenous patterns of work, sexuality and religion.

INTRODUCTION

13

Ralston also queries the missionary interpretation o f the kapu system in Hawaii. Early missionaries saw these restrictions as founded in ideas of women's inherent impurity, and thus viewed these restrictions as demeaning and oppressive of women. Following a more general argument proposed by Hanson (1982), Ralston suggests that, rather than being founded on ideas of the repugnance of women's bodies, they are based on notions that women's bodies attract and are conduits for divine dangerous orces. Such regulations were not just imposed on women but regulated the lives of men as well. The system she suggests is predicated on an idea of the complementarity of male and female powers and dangers rather than on a notion of asymmetrical danger from women. Thomas, in his reappraisal of polyandry, posits that understanding the tapu system is essential to uncovering the place of the pekio or secondary husbands of high-ranking women. Like Ralston he sees the opposition of tapu and me'ie not as an opposition of sacred and proane but as restricted versus unrestricted or clear. Moreover this opposition is not gendered in that such terms may apply to either male or emale. Women were tapu not because of their natural impurity but because their bodies were seen as channels for ancestral spiritual agency. Indeed the vagina might be a vessel for the restoration of tapu. Not surprisingly such ideas were anathema to the missionaries and here, as in Hawaii, they opposed it, and the system ultimately collapsed. The idea of inherent female pollution has also been challenged for Melanesia. Keesing, both in this volume and elsewhere (Keesing 1985), suggests that in the traditionalist communities of Malaita women in menstrual and childbirth seclusion see themselves neither as dirty nor deiled. He uses women's own oral histories to argue that they see themselves rather as sources of spiritual and moral order and the practices of seclusion as essential to the maintenance of that order. Elsewhere Keesing tells us that both the area of the male shrine and the female seclusion area are designated as abu in contradistinction to the mundane area of human settlement. mola. So here again he suggests a pattern of polarised male and female domains and powers rather than a male domination which is rooted in an ideology of the inherent impurity of women. The various Christian missions on Malaita have worked to end such segregations, but in the eyes of these women this makes the mission a dangerous place. The recurrent rerain in these life stories is that 'bad living'.

14

F A M I L Y A N D GE N D E R I N THE P A C I F I C

disorder, disease and moral decline derive rom mission people failing to keep male and emale domains apart. These several examples then attest to the propensity of European observers to see seclusion as evidence in itself or the denigration of women's bodies and procreative capacities. But perhaps the missionary interpretations had more to do with Christian thought, linking women with states of deilement and sin, than with Paciic concepts. Regardless of how such misunderstandings arose they were reproduced as Christian ideas became entrenched and contributed to the collapse of these indigenous pattens of segre­ gation. And in each case we might see women thus not as beneiting. but as being deprived of those sacred powers which the ancestral religion conferred on them. Meggitt difers dramatically in his assessment of pollution ideas in Enga country, although he also notes that the erosion of pollution beliefs has urther imperilled rather than beneited women. Unlike Ralston, Thomas and Keesing. Meggitt is certain that seclusion here was predicated on ideas of women's pollution and ineriority. Because the attacks on such pollution beliefs by church and school were not coupled with concomitant criticism of male supremacy, the result has been a worsening of women's situation. Enga women are now raped with impunity since their male assailants are no longer afraid of emale bodies or menstrual blood but are still certain of their superiority and control over women. Such lagrant misunderstandings of indigenous pattens of gender thus are not just the preserve of early missionaries but also of more recent colonial and post-colonial authorities. European legislators and educators have attempted to alter the lives of Paciic women in ways which they believed would enable a new generation of Paciic women to become citizens of a modem state. These aims were advanced and, in the case of Papua New Guinea, are now enshrined in the Constitution of the independent government. But as Meggitt's essay on Enga women suggests, Western liberal ideals of equality of status before the law were not only alien but culturally precluded. Since 1976 the Papua New Guinean government has endorsed prevailing Western values of sexual egalitarianism and equal opportunity in education and employment and condemned all orms of legal discrimination against women. Meggitt's familiarity with Enga society over a long period enables him to explore the changes in women's lives in terms of such ideals embodied in legislation and

I NTRODUCTION

15

government policies. Western concepts of relative status, autonomy and equality were perhaps inappropriate to an analysis of Enga women in the pre-colonial period, but they are highly relevant today given the policies ormulated by the post-colonial government. Meggitt departs from the generous conventions of cultural relativism and reveals Enga women as consistently subordinated and deprived. In the past, he argues, they were constrained by their menolk and physically abused or breaches of customary authority. Now, he observes, the ideology of male domination continues as a hegemonic force that limits emale autonomy, education and recourse to law. In short the changes wrought by missions, administrators and economic development projects have transormed male-emale relations in Enga society, but women have been the losers. The rhetoric of legal reform can no longer be dismissed as just a European imposition since women now have to deal with such systemic inequities in the context of an independent if post-colonial state. Meggitt's essay most urgently poses the philosophical and political problems which underlie the essays of comparison in this volume. The tension between universals and cultural particulars is at the heart of all anthropological enquiry, and most acutely in the comparative study of gender and domesticity. Here committed adjudications of situations as ' better ' or ' worse ' or women jostle with statements based on a simple relativism or a more sophisticated deconstructionism. In this latter mode it has often been revealed that the central analytic concepts by which we compare and adjudicate - such as nature and culture, domestic and public - are habits of thought which arose at a very particular point in European history and are not universals of the mind. We trust one original contribution of this volume is that it sets such grand epistemological questions in comparison in the more precise conines of historical and cultural particulars. By juxtaposing European and Paciic models of domestic life in certain times and places we hope to have demonstrated that our own agonies of comparison and evaluation are but a continuation of a conversation which is already going on in colonial history. Paciic peoples and European intruders have both had to address similar issues already in the context of real historical struggles and not just academic debates. Throughout this volume there is much evidence of mutual misunderstanding, but this should not be read simply to reinorce arguments or better translation. Rather ' intercultural conversation '

16

F A M I L Y A N D GE N D E R I N THE P A C I F I C

in the Paciic has always been a colonial conversation even i n its most recent orms. The colonial nature of European discourse about others is revealed throughout, but there is also testament to that more diicult act, namely, how Paciic peoples have internalised European discourses about their past traditions and accepted negative evaluations of their indigenous domesticities. Thus what may at irst appear only as questions of anthropological or historical interpretation become matters of some political moment. This political dimension needs closer investigation - irst. in situating the work of Paciic historians and anthropologists vis-a-vis Christian missions, and second, in relation to the policies of independent Paciic states and movements or Aboriginal autonomy. In has been said of the relation between anthropologists and missionaries that ' young anthropologists know all about mission­ aries beore they've ever met any. They play a large role in the demonology of the subject' (Barley 1983 : 28). This fraught relation between missionaries and anthropologists can be attributed to many actors. Although many anthropologists are dismissive of missionary endeavours and missionary observations, the truth is that we are almost entirely dependent on the writings of missionaries or a vision of Paciic culture as it was in the past. And while such views are never innocent depictions of past realities, the observation of missionaries who lived for years in close proximity with people whose languages they learned and whose customs they recorded are usually of much greater signiicance than the records of fleeting explorers and administrators. But it is perhaps just this linguistic competency and familiarity with indigenous culture which so unsettles the anthropologist. The anthropological quest for distinctive, integral cultural tradi­ tions often required that the anthropologist search or subjects with as little contact with Europeans as possible. But more often than not the anthropologist followed in the footsteps of the missionaries and sometimes had the galling experience of being mistaken or yet another evangelist of a new order. The diferences in aims and ends so clear to European participants were more obscure to their Paciic observers. This uneasy relationship between missionaries and anthro­ pologists persists both at the level of personal response and intellectual appraisal. This is predictable both because of the gap between committed Christianity and the agnostic liberalism pre-

I NTRODUCT I O N

17

valent amongst academics, and because anthropology emphasised the gap between the biased and unscientiic records of missionary observers and the allegedly objective and scientiic accounts of proessional anthropologists. Paciic historians have in general had a greater intellectual tolerance if not a greater personal regard for missionaries. In so ar as Paciic history has dealt more thoroughly with Europeans in the Paciic than Paciic cultures. they have made more use of missionary sources and accorded them more respect. The essays in this volume reflect the varying views of liberal scholars rom both disciplines. In assessing the impact of Christian evangelism on amily life Keesing, or Malaita, and Hamilton, or Australia, make the harshest appraisals. But even in the essays by Grimshaw and Young, where the missionary endeavour is treated with com­ passionate insight, there is ultimately a very critical appraisal of the eicacy or worth of the missionary intervention. If missionaries have been the demons of anthropology, anthro­ pologists and, to some extent, historians have become the demons of Paciic peoples in the era of decolonisation. Leaders of Paciic states and Aboriginal movements are concerned to monitor and restrict oreign researchers and to ensure the research beneits more than the researchers themselves. There is a prevalent resentment of what is seen as a cultural imperialism persisting past decolonisation. These claims raise serious and sensitive issues, and Paciic scholars have been orced to re-examine both the relevance of their work and their right to do it. How then can we justify a book like this composed exclusively of the writings of Europeans? We consider this and similar eforts defensible in several ways. First, this book is not just outsiders scrutinising Paciic peoples but a study of the encounter between Europeans and indigenous people in the Paciic. It is as much devoted to the exotic concepts and practices of Europeans as the locals - given our own origins as Europeans on one side of the encounter, at least we might be credited with insider rather than outsider status. Second, the contributors to this volume are not just remote outsiders to Paciic cultures. All of us have lived in the societies we study, be it or several years of anthropological ieldwork or for shorter periods doing archival work in urban centres. During such periods we have had to acquire not just linguistic and cultural knowledge but also appreciation of local ideas about knowledge as property and power. Some accuse anthropologists or historians of stealing local knowledge or of exploiting the people they

18

F A M I L Y A N D GENDER I N THE P A C I F I C

work with. We have all had to deal with such accusations and the moral dilemmas they pose in particular local contexts. They have perhaps been most acute where scholarship has converged with the immediacies of political and legal struggle - or instance in the Australian Aboriginal context in the ight for land rights and the recognition of customary law. Rather than admitting to the theft of local traditions we suggest that the work of scholars has often stimulated a revival of traditions, and ultimately a greater abundance of local knowledge. The analytic traditions of history and anthro­ pology are of course European creations. But there is a possibility here too of decolonisation whereby the Eurocentric concepts and conventions are challenged by Paciic peoples themselves becoming practitioners. This is already happening in many parts of the Paciic as indigenous people record and analyse cultural traditions and oral history. Finally, we ofer a deence not on the basis of who we are but on the basis of the scholarship itself. We hope this volume is of use not only for its unravelling of processes in the remote past but also because these bear on very current debates about the amily and gender throughout the Paciic. The intimacies of domestic life have not only been written out of the analyses of colonialism ofered by scholars but also left of the agenda of the politics of decolonisation. In attending to the big questions of customary land tenure, the trajectory and speed of development, the tensions between national­ ism and regional identity and the expansion of oreign powers and nuclear proliferation in the region, Paciic and Aboriginal politicians may often ignore the domestic domain. It seems unproblematic or marginal to political lie. But what this volume shows is that the reconstitution of domestic lie has been central to Paciic colonial history, and presumably future domestic transormations will be central to the unolding of a post-colonial history. There are presently potent pressures on families throughout the region - the processes of migration to overseas countries or urban centres {increasingly by women as well as men), the new forms of worth and wealth associated with a greater reliance on cash, the challenges to familial authority ofered by a new ' youth culture' and the ideologies of gender and the family promoted by the explosion of video and television technology in the region. In attending to such emergent problems about future amilies, this book may be of use in revealing how present families have emerged rom a Paciic past.

I N E W EN G L AND M I S S ION AR Y W I V E S , H A W A I I AN WO M EN AND 'T H E CULT OF TRU E WO M AN HOOD '

PATRICIA G RI M S H A W

One Sunday morning in early November 1825, Kaahumanu, awe­ inspiring queen regent of the Hawaiian Islands, widow of the great warrior chief Kamehameha, was carried into the Christian mission chapel at Waimea or the morning service. The preacher was Samuel Whitney, his wife Mercy Partridge Whitney, New England Protestant missionaries supported by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. The Whitneys had arrived with the irst contingent of missionaries in 1820 and had laboured or our years, with their growing young amily, on this unusual rontier. On this particular morning, Kaahumanu's bearers seated their chief 's chair at the front of the chapel level with the preacher and, like him, facing the congregation (M. Whitney, Journal, 16 November 1825). To the joy of the mission band, this powerful queen had already submitted to instruction in reading and writing and at a Honolulu school examination earlier in the year had written on her slate, 'This is my word and hand. I am making myself strong. I declare in the presence of God, I repent of my sin, and believe God to be our Father ' (Missionary Herald, July 1825). This impressive matriarch, so enormous in size that Laura Judd, wie of the mission doctor, reported that 'she could hold any of us in her lap, as she would a little child, which she often takes the liberty of doing ' (Carter 1899 : 26), had allotted tenancy rights for mission land and had expressed the encouraging belief that a ruler belonging to Christ's family should not only serve God personally but persuade her people to follow suit. On this particular Sunday, however, Samuel and Mercy Whitney were not satisied with Kaahumanu's behaviour. This proud chief 19

20

F A M I L Y A N D G E N DER I N T H E P A C I F I C

had placed herself symbolically on the same level as the preacher, God's representative. Moreover, it was essential that the minister face the entire congregation if play and disturbance were to be avoided. The missionary pair chided the queen who, her haughty and disdainful airs apparently a thing of the past, responded in a humble fashion. Kaahumanu admitted her ignorance, and 'begged them to tell her how to conduct herself at home, at church, in the house, eating and drinking, lying down or rising up' (M. Whitney, Journal. r 6 November 1825). Mercy Whitney, who recorded this incident in her daily journal. expressed special approbation for Kaahumanu's clear perception of the degree of changed behaviour now required of her. For acceptance into the full favour of the American missionaries Hawaiians could not simply attend church and mission school faithfully. To be recognised as good Christians they needed not only to regulate public and private behaviour according to the new moral laws of the ledgling state, but must also mediate every single aspect of their daily habits, trivial though these changes might seem, but all of which were evidence of the new heart, the reformed consciousness, that genuine conversion to Christ entailed. The missionary general meeting in r 8 3 2 spelled out some of the mission's aims : Resolved, that while it is our main business to publish the word of God, we will discountenance the use and cultivation of tobacco : encourage improvements in agriculture and manuacture ; habits of industry in the nation ; neatness in the habits and dress of the inhabitants ; punctuality in all engagements, especially in the payment of debts ; justice and temperance in the rulers in the execution of the law, and loyalty, order and peace among their subjects, in all the relati9ns and duties of life. (Sandwich Islands Mission 1 8 3 2 : 1 3 3-4)

The women of the m1ss1on took as their special portion of this ambitious brief the ' transformation' of Hawaiian notions of femininity. Kaahumanu had at least realised the magnitude of the task they undertook and clearly saw adherence to mission ways to be ultimately in her own best political interests. The majority of Hawaiian women remained ignorant of or bafled by the essentially changed order that the American women sought to create. The story of three decades of intercultural contact in Hawaii - one of frustration for the mission women, and evasion by the Hawaiians -

M I SSION A RY W I V E S A N D H A W A I I A N W O M E N

21

was fraught with considerable tension and unhappiness for both groups of women. Neither side could triumph: by the late 184os, stalemate was reached (see Chapter 4). Mercy Whitney was one of the nearly eighty women, pre­ dominantly from New England or the west of New York State, who left America for Hawaii (the ' Sandwich Islands') in the three decades rom l 8 l9 onwards. They were for the most part energetic, intelligent and well-educated women, daughters of farmers or small­ business men, whose youthful ambition to serve on a mission ield led them to marry departing missionaries. In the decades ollowing the War of Independence, Protestant missionary outreach shifted rom the native American Indians of their own west to encompass non-Christian peoples of the new lands opened to the imagination by explorers and travellers. Captain James Cook had visited and named the Sandwich Islands in l778, on his third and last great Paciic expedition. Yankee traders had brought Hawaiian youths to New England port towns ; some had displayed an interest in Christianity. The churches planned and prayed or the conversion of this ' interesting ' people, and sent successive contingents of missionaries to accomplish this purpose (Andrew 1976). It was no accident that young women were found to dedicate their lives to this missionary work. Women were centrally involved in the religious revivals which swept the northeast during the early decades of the century, the so-called ' second great awakening ', which had provided metaphysical justiication for a range of religious and charitable activity undertaken by women. Women were prominent in eforts to teach the young, reform slum dwellers, persuade men to temperance, rescue prostitutes and, increasingly, to ree Southern slaves. To quit home and amily in order to bring the strongly upheld beneits of Christian civilisation to non-believers on a distant, exotic frontier was an uncommon but nevertheless strongly valorised choice of reform endeavour (Grimshaw 1983). As Catherine Beecher wrote in her Treatise on Domestic Economy in 1842, ' To American women, more than to any others on earth. is committed the exalted privilege of extending over the world those blessed influences, which are to renovate degraded man, and " to clothe all climes with beauty '" (Hunter l984:xiii). Women's involvement in mission work was linked in an intricately complex fashion with the economic changes arising from early industrialisation in the northeast and a particular elaboration of

22

F A M I L Y AND GENDER IN THE P A C I F I C

notions of the amily, and of femininity, that accompanied changes in material life. An appreciation of this social change makes more comprehensible the agenda which underwrote the mission women's activities in Hawaii. As the integrated household economy of small farms and independent artisanal industry began to break down with the introduction of mills and factories, a amily structure involving the man as the sole breadwinner involved in paid, p ublic employment, with the wife as the housekeeper removed rom most productive labour, became dominant in growing urban areas. Married, middle-class women were portrayed in much prescriptive literature as the essential ocus of an intimate, personal circle whose relationships contrasted radically with the alienated marketplace of male endeavour. Good family life would prove the catalyst for rejuvenation and reform in the fast-changing and potentially corrupt new social order. The articulation of proper femininity needed to it women to their part in this haven of domesticity. P uritan traditions had s ustained a signiicant role for women in the God-fearing family. The ante-bell um period saw an enhanced elaboration of ' the cult of true womanhood', in Barbara Welter's deinition, involving piety, p urity, submissiveness and domesticity (Cott 1977; Ryan 198 1 ; Welter 1966; Sklar 1973; Smith-Rosenberg 1971). The elevation of women's nature inherent in these resh deinitions of emininity contained within it the seeds of change in women's social and political roles. Women's s upposed moral and spiritual value was used to stress a new competency for women in the public arena, initially within the orbit of social reorm. Hence arose the decision of this particular group of American women to Christianise. and raise the status of Hawaiian women to their own presumed level. Emerging from their own small worlds, sustained by both religious and national enthusiasm, they were innocent of notions of cultural relativism and prepared to designate every deviance from their own moral values as sinful. abroad no less than at home. When they reached their Polynesian destination it was inevitable that they would interpret what they saw within the set of cultural beliefs so deeply a part of their own identities. The various contingents of American missionaries established themselves irst in the port towns and eventually spread to the most dense centres of population in the ive main islands. The Hawaiian society on the ringes of which they lived was in the process of change as a result of decades of intercultural contact with explorers,

M I SS I O N A R Y W I V E S A N D H A W A I I A N W O M E N

23

traders, beachcombers and, inally, the missionaries. Some months beore the irst missionaries arrived the religious system, the kapu laws, had been overthrown on the initiative of powerful chiefs, the islands' political leaders. Much of the social organisation of traditional Hawaiian culture persisted, however, changing shape radically in some aspects, minimally in others, rom 1820 to 1850. For most of this time a chiefly elite, the landowners, dominated much of the daily life of the commoners, the maka'ainana, in a style reminiscent of feudal society. Commoners laboured as tenants on the chiefs' land, and surrendered much of the fruits of their labour to their superiors. The labour of commoners was not usually especially onerous since the land and sea provided plentiul nutritious ood, but at times the acquisitiveness of chiefs, impressed by Western skills and goods, could drive the population to sustained and often excessive stints of labour. It appeared that pockets of impoverishment, physical deterioration and the neglect of the care of the young were the result, exacerbated by the acceptability of alcohol and nicotine to men, women and children. European diseases, too, took their toll, particularly the venereal diseases that were all too often the undesired result of Hawaiian women's sexual relationships with oreign visitors and which caused sufering and sterility. The social status of Hawaiian women was closely intertwined with their class position and their place in the lie cycle. Chiefly women wielded enormous power. As one missionary observed of the konohiki, or headmen of his district, ' some, by the way, are women, for Paul's injunctions are not observed on the Sandwich Islands. Women often usurp the reigns of government over large districts'. Before the ending of kapu such women had been subject to deinitions of the female sex as proane or dangerous which were inherent in the Polynesian dichotomy of male and female qualities, and which had kept the sexes separate in both religious ritual and in such mundane areas as eating meals (Hanson 1982; see also chapters 2 and 3 of this volume). Chiefly women now were freed rom such restrictions. The lot of non-chiefly women was similarly relieved by the ending of kapu, but they still shared with their menfolk restrictions on their autonomy arising rom their inferior social status as a group. Subject to some extent to male physical domination, their social position was not, however, noticeably inferior to that of non-chiefly men. Except when chiefs drove commoners to unaccustomed toil, women were if anything advantaged by the usual division of labour which persisted

24

F A M I L Y A N D G E N D ER I N T H E P A C I F I C

through the mission period. Men undertook the bulk of heavy labour in building, ishing and agriculture, and also cooked the meals. Women made mats and barkcloth. collected shellish, and were more closely involved than men in the care of young children. Descent was traced through both the male and female lines, but although patrilocal residence was the norm, women's families of origin remained their signiicant point of reference. Sexual relations were little restrained in early youth. and marriages were easily terminated ; chiefly men and women often had several spouses at the same time. Fertility was controlled by abortion and infanticide, and babies were often adopted among the extended kinship network which sustained signiicant material support systems (Goldman l 9 70 ; Sahlins 1 958). Hawaiian women's share in productive labour, then, was not onerous ; their sexuality was not heavily constrained ; means of fertility control were normative ; and the task of child socialisation was shared with kin. It was not a igment of the American imagination, however. that the lives of Hawaiian women were not idyllic in precontact times, nor without tensions in the decades after 1820. Nothing in the Hawaiians' situation, however, appeared even remotely acceptable to the self-appointed evangelists who saw Hawaiian women as their life-long cause. The men of the mission automatically undertook the dominant roles as preachers and teachers of men, delegating to women a share in the teaching of children and a special obligation to female adults. Hiram Bingham, the oremost missionary in Honolulu, explamed the strategy in this way. Separating Hawaiian women for instruction gave the mission women a full opportunity to read scripture, pray and ' conveniently to give sisterly and maternal counsel to multitudes of their own sex'. (Conventionally. mission women would have had to cede priority to men in a mixed gathering.) The separation similarly gave more scope or ' the awakened native talent and zeal ' of Hawaiian women as well as men in church work. The separate instruction also produced ' a more perfect system of mutual watchfulness over the diferent members. and a more feasible mode of discipline ' (Bingham l 98 l : 3 6 s ) The American missionary women's active participation in direct mission work was. in practice, heavily curtailed by their decision to segregate their own children rom Hawaiian influence, and at various stages of their life cycle they participated only peripherally in formal teaching (Grimshaw 1983). The mission women's influence, however, .

MISSIONARY WIVES AND H A W A I I A N WOMEN

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emerged from all the various ways in which they transmitted their cultural prescriptions. Arriving as they did at a critical period of Hawaiian cultural change, the American missionaries made rapid headway in persuading chiefs to a sympathetic interest in their religious system, and the adherence of Kaahumanu and other chiefs to church attendance and support of the mission efected a swift conversion of the population, remarkable when compared with the situation facing missionaries in the east. Granted that Western incursion was already setting in motion great change, the Christian chiefs undoubtedly believed that by welcoming the new religion and becoming leaders in the fledgling church their own political hegemony would be best preserved (Howe 1984 ; Daws 1974). Commoners began attending church because the chiefs commanded them to do so. As the Hilo missionaries told the home mission board in 18 33, church attendance had not been voluntary, but in obedience to the commands of their chiefs. Hawaiians had ' put on the profession of true religion and engaged in the perormance of its external duties ', but all that had been secured was ' a prompt though thoughtless, servile and sycophantic audience ' (Dibble et al. to ABCFM, 1 4 October 1833). Hawaiians were listless at meetings, according to Mary Parker, and could be moved neither to fear or anger. 'They submit wholly to what you say, ever having been accustomed to it.' If a chief told them to go to meeting, they immediately complied, but they simply did not know enough to become Christians (Parker, Journal (A), [ ?] June l 83 3). Meanwhile, despite new laws governing theft. murder and adultery, old ways of living. condemned over and over again by the missionaries, persisted. The problem of how to bring about the genuine, deep-seated change in the hearts. minds and consciences of Hawaiians preoccupied mission thinking. In the last analysis, their strategy for reorm came to rest on that institution so stressed in their own culture: the family. Family relationships on Hawaii appeared chaotic so that neither children, the citizens of tomorrow, nor adults could ind reinforcement for decent behaviour in the one place where, as the missionaries saw it, altruistic and uplifting relationships were essential. ' It is impossible to conjecture who are husbands and wives, parents and children from their appearance assembled on the sabbath or at any other time ', one missionary wrote. ' Nothing of that courtesy and attention is shown to each other by persons most

26

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intimately related as in the Christian population ' (Dibble [c . 1831]). ·Where ', asked Fidelia Coan. ' were the dutiful sons, virtuous daughters, chaste wives and faithful husbands of home? ' (Mother's Magazine, 1837). Here, said a missionary at Waimea, was ' none of that mother's fondness of her darling child and that child's attachment to its afectionate mother which is seen in enlightened America' (Lyons to ABCFM, 6 September 1833). Rather than in state. church or school, a reorm endeavour should be shaped around the family life of Hawaiians and it was the mission women who spearheaded this efort. Above all, the women singled out the Hawaiian wife and mother as the agent or · regeneration '. Hawaiian women were presented with the model of American femininity, the full force of the American's material wealth. skills. and the missionaries' undeniable altruism and orceful personal attributes. Hawaiian women should be rendered genuinely pious. sexually pure, dutifully submissive and domestically oriented as housewives and mothers. Then, as the centre of a better-ordered family. their influence would ripple outwards. redeeming not only wayward children and errant husbands. but the whole kingdom for godly living. The foremost goal of the American mission women was to convert Hawaiian women to a genuine piety. the mainspring as they saw it of all worthy moral behaviour. The Americans led Hawaiian women in sex-segregated prayer meetings. held classes for women after the Sunday Services. or made time available in their own homes to hear Hawaiians ' tell their thoughts • on religious matters. Charlotte Baldwin. for example, during a period of increased religious interest. set apart a room in her house where. ' when not engaged in personal conversation. she could resort with pious females or prayer ; and when she was not able to be with them, they prayed there by themselves ' (Alexander 195 2 : 91). One newly arrived single mission­ ary. Maria Patton (later Chamberlain). found the American women's eforts impressive. At Lahaina in 1828 she witnessed Clarissa Richards 'sitting in the midst of 200 females addressing them on divine truths ·. women who sat with solemn expressions and ' big tears stealing down their cheeks ' (Patton to sister, 19 May 1828). A determined efort was mounted for the souls of Hawaiian women. The souls of the heathen. they often told themselves, were of ' incalculable worth ·. For Hawaiian women to reach a direct and vital relationship with

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their Maker, however, wider instruction was needed than the bare elements of the Christian aith. Hawaiian women needed a formal Western education so that they could read the Bible and other spiritually uplifting literature and attain the spiritual reinement of sensibility and understanding gained through a liberal education. Most of the American women themselves had felt the beneits of an education in the new female seminaries of the northeast in their youth, and some had fought hard to attain this higher education. Hawaiian women, too, not just young children, would be ofered the ruits of this learning. And so, in daily or weekly sessions, the American mission women taught Hawaiians to read and write and count, and for the more forward scholars the curriculum included geography, geometry and philosophy. The Americans, devoid of customary teaching aids beyond the simple readers put out by the mission press, devised ingenious ways of matching the needs of the situation. Hawaiian women brought seeds to school for counting lessons, wrote on smooth sand with sticks and used home-made maps and globes which the mission women sat up at night to construct. Charlotte Baldwin at Waimea in the early 1830s daily held a school for emale teachers (women who would in turn teach other Hawaiians), and on two days a week a school for three hundred women, as well as working with children (Baldwin, Report, 1832 : 2). Such onerous work loads were undertaken by brides until babies appeared, by the childless or by those whose children had been sent away to school. Despite the distractions of infants in arms, Hawaiian women showed interest in acquiring basic literacy. Indeed they showed an aptitude which compared well with that of Americans in the opinion of Mercy Whitney, which was surprising considering ' their habits of sloth and indolence, being unaccustomed from infancy, to apply their minds to anything which required thought or the exercise of their mental faculties' (M. Whitney, Journal, 30 September 1834). The link between such pursuits and piety was frequently stressed. Sarah Joiner Lyman's attitudes in her educational work at Hilo was common. Many women in her school for females aged eight to sixty years might not be expected to make remarkable progress. but the school at least brought scholars more regularly under the means of grace (Lyman Journal, 24 January 1837). When Maria Ogden irst joined the mission station at Waimea in

F A M I L Y A N D G E N D ER J N T H E PA C I F I C 1 8 29, she wrote approvingly of the schoolroom for Hawaiian women. ' Their seats and writing tables are chiefly made of those boards, on which the natives used to spend much of their time, sporting in the surf' (Gulick to ABCFM. 2 7 April 1 8 2 9 ) . The use of surboards in such an enterprise was both practical and symbolic. If women were to be pious they must be weaned away from pastimes that were ar from moral and what better way to do so than by ofering the substitute of education for their customary games and amusements ? Hawaiians did not appear to the missionaries to have enough work to do, and some missionaries felt it valueless to urge them to greater labour while an autocratic government prevented the people rom personal accumulation. Their free time was spent in swimming and suring, in cardplaying, boxing matches, games. cockights, hulas and other traditional games of skill or chance. Not only were these games seen as a useless waste of time, but they were inextricably mingled with such sins as gambling and with sexuality of an overt kind which appeared subversive of Christian morals. The women, whose labour appeared even less onerous than the men's, seemed particularly in need of those alternative pursuits which Christian education could ofer : Bible-reading groups, church meetings, school examinations. Sunday school picnics and tea meetings, as well as formal classroom instruction. Choir work in particular attracted the American women's interest, since they so much missed the good music of their home congregations. Maria Patton described such a choir rehearsal at Lahaina where ' twenty­ four genteely dressed Hawaiian ladies sat opposite the same number of gentlemen with an elegant table sporting three glass lamps placed between them ' (Patton to sister. 20 August 1 8 2 8 ) . With choirs, a s i n so �any pursuits, American hopes were often thwarted. Mary Parker told a friend that she could hardly keep herself from laughing sometimes, the Hawaiians sang so laboriously. ' Nature seems not to have designed them for the best of singers ' (M. Parker to Mrs Frisbie, April 1 8 3 6 ) Her reaction to singing mirrored a deep-seated scepticism about the depth of genuine piety that the mission women's activity had really ach ieved. Newly arrived women could be impressed at the sight of a large group of Hawaiian women led in prayer by one of their number in a style not too far removed from expected forms. Those American women who had been years in the field however felt increasingly that the manifesta­ tion of piety was superficial. When a religious revival which swept .

MI SSIONARY WIVES AND HAWAIIAN WOMEN

29

the largest island and rapidly increased church membership (as opposed to mere attendance), many mission women were unmoved by the local missionaries' elation. ' We tremble. yet know not what to say, nor scarcely what to think ', Sybil Bingham told a mission friend, musing on the ' fickleness ' of the Hawaiian character (S. Bingham to N. Ruggles, I h August r 8 � 8 ). The essential thrust of the American women's strategy was to substitute piety for the sexuality which seemed to be the dominant drive in Hawaiian women's activities. The efort to induce notions of sexual purity extended far beyond prohibitions on ' promiscuous ' bathing and sexually suggestive dances. While the American women saw monogamous marriage as the sole legitimate avenue for the expression of physical sex, their own notions of purity clearly accepted such sexuality in a relatively positive way. However to be confronted with a society in which matters concerning the body were explicitly, publicly and unselfconsciously presented was shocking. Nudity. urination, defecation and. above all. intimate sexual relations appeared scarcely subject to even minimal regu­ lation, insensitive as they were to the cultural bases of Hawaiian sexual behaviour. The Kailua missionaries complained in 1 8 3 1 that ' the sin of uncleanness ' clung to Hawaiians like leprosy, even to church members, despite the two-year probation period the ministers imposed. There was little concern or watchfulness over one another. Hawaiians congregated together in the same small house, and slept together on the one mat. Missionaries blamed ' the unceremonious manner of intercourse between the sexes, without any forms of reserve or any delicacy of thought and conversation - The idle habits of all, especially the women, and their fondness for visiting from home at night - and the force of long established habits ' (Missionary Herald. July 1 8 3 2 ). ' The degradation of the females in this spot deeply afects my heart ', wrote Clarissa Richards. ' On this subject I could write much - but delicacy forbids ' (C. Richards. Journal, 1 8 2 23 : 40). The missionaries sought to establish and sustain mono­ gamous marriage, acting wherever possible to stamp out premarital and extramarital sexuality and encouraging Hawaiians to cover nude bodies with decent clothing in Western style. Instruction on the married state was spelled out clearly in a pamphlet A Word Relating to Marriage, prepared for mission purposes. Marriage meant one partner, in a relationship lasting for life.

30

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Prostitution, adultery and 'male and female impersonations' were sins of the lesh. Marriages forbidden by God. such as those between close blood relatives, were prohibited. Couples should not marry too young, but wait until their bodies grew stronger and their characters more developed. Partners should be close in age so that they shared many interests ; they should know each other well, understand each other's commitments and love each other. They should have joint residence, and own all property together (Clark 1844). Divorce was sanctioned only in the case of adultery or wilful desertion where mediation had failed. Missionaries did not require couples married Hawaiian style to submit to a Christian service lest every married person in the islands should feel perfectly free to consider their current relationships null and void, and to swap partners at will, but they insisted that all future liaisons be blessed by the church. Female and male chiefs, however, who had more than one spouse, were to choose one and relinquish the rest. One chiely woman of Kailua claimed to have had no fewer than forty spouses, usually several at the same time (Missionary Herald, October 1829), and a male chief seven. Samuel Whitney asked him whether so many wives did not give rise to some anxiety. 'Yes, much', replied the chief. 'I can not sleep for fear some other man will get them!' (S. Whitney, Journal. 30 April 1826). Such irregularities were insupportable in the political leaders of the country. They were encouraged to introduce stringent punishments or bigamy and adultery ; by the late 1820s in Lahaina. errant subjects were being forced to pay for their sins by making roads (men), or coninement in irons (women) (Missionary Herald, February 1829). 'Marriage is honorable in all, and the bed undeiled. but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge ', thundered preachers rom a favourite Hebrew text. It was easier to get Hawaiians to the altar. alas, than to restrain ' whoremongers and adulterers' thereafter. The most clearcut case of irregularity that the mission could bring under some degree of surveillance was the sexual traicking between Hawaiian women and foreign sailors of visiting ships. Initially such exchange of sexual favours or material goods was welcomed by Hawaiian girls, who may even have hoped to absorb mana (sanctity or divine strength) from the god-like white men (Sahlins 1981b : 40). As well as material goods, however, the exchange often entailed unwanted pregnancies, uncontrollable

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venereal disease, jealous male violence and, where a Hawaiian woman had been abandoned after several months of cohabitation, penury. Whatever the subtleties of sexual politics in this interchange, the mission women viewed it within the model of their own society as sheer exploitative prostitution. They wept when, a fresh ship in port, their young emale scholars turned a deaf ear to instruction and went of in the boats with pleasurable excitement (Ogden to M. Chamberlain, n.d. ). They were in the forefront of pressure on chiefs to try to prevent this trade, with an anger made more intense by their daily contact with girls whose bodies were covered with syphilitic sores and with women rendered sterile from venereal disease. Hawaiian brides decked themselves out with clothes or weddings and prayer meetings. The rule that the body, particularly the breasts, ought to be clothed at all times, was one held without conviction, while the myriad rules governing appropriate dress to match various occasions was hardly won. One of Maria Chamberlain's irst actions after acquiring some of the Hawaiian language was to exhort women at Waikiki, in faltering tongue, ' to be modest, to tell their neighbours it was a shame to go exposed and without kapa as we had recently seen some of them ' (M. Chamberlain, Journal, 8 December 1 8 29). Mary Parker's irst sight of Hawaiians inspired a chill of disappoint­ ment : ' naked, rude and disgusting to every feeling ' (M. Parker, Journal (A), 3 1 March 1 8 3 3 ). The American women pressed clothes on to their parishioners, sewing early and late for chiefs and teaching the skill to as many women as would heed them. Their irst success was to persuade women, at least in the sight of Westerners, to wear a cotton shift with a skirt of Hawaiian cloth wound around their waists, and eventually a style of dress patterned on their own nightgowns became common usage. Frequently clothes were removed for work or for bathing, and women would sit wet through in church services if they had been caught in rain, although they customarily removed wet clothing when they were outside. At times success seemed imminent. At a school examination at Waimea in 1 8 29, the women decked themselves out in silk gowns, black with white headdresses or green with yellow headdresses ( Guilick to ABCFM, 2 7 April I 8 2 9 ). The high chief Kapiolani, deier of the goddess Pele, won acclaim. as was described by a mission daughter in this way : Her hair was becomingly arranged with side pufs, and a high tortoise shell comb, which was the admiration of our childish eyes. Her feet were always

32

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clad in stockings and shoes . . . on public occasions. or when visiting away rom home, she wore a tight fitting dress. not even adopting the ' holuku ' (or ' Mother Hubbard ' ) which afterwards became the national style. Silk and satin of the gayest colors were the chosen dress of the chiefs, but she preferred grave and quiet shades. (Taylor 1 89 7 : 6 )

Yet for the most part the women were pained at the sight of inappropriate dress. even among the chiefs : rich satin dresses with bare feet, expensive mantles over cotton shifts. Other Hawaiian women showed a tendency to see clothes as ornamentation rather than to cover nakedness. When straw hats were introduced to replace flower wreaths, women loaded them with bows of dyed kapa ribbon and extended the brims to enormous proportions. Leg of mutton sleeves, padded with cloth, ballooned out voluminously. The proper balance in dress was a rare achievement indeed, as rare as the reordering of sexuality they had tried to impose. Marriage was no security against the sin of adultery, mourned Clarissa Armstrong in 1 8 3 8 . No less than nine quite young girls who attended meetings regularly and heard religious instruction every day had been guilty of adultery (Armstrong, Journal, 4 February 1 8 3 8 ) . Unless some honest way was laid out ' for the people to supply their new and clamorous wants ' , wrote Laura Judd from Honolulu in l 84 l , ' wives and daughters will continue to barter virtue for gain ' just as the other sex resorted to extortion and theft (L. Judd to Mrs R. Anderson, August 1 84 1 ). The American missionaries always looked askance at the marriage of Christian believers and non-believers, but particularly so when the non-believer was the wife. The problem involved in this case was the proper submission that a wife owed to husbandly authority : ' in the marriage contract ' , the mission asserted, · the woman surrenders herself to the authority and control of the husband in a sense materially diferent from the surrender of the husband to the wife (though the husband's aut hority cannot contravene the authority of Christ which is always paramount ) · (Sandwich Islands Mission 1 8 3 7 : 1 3-14). It was this consideration that led them also to oppose older chiely women's marriages to youths where there was a great disparity in rank, age or influence, ' for the wife would probably surrender her superiority reluctantly if at all ; or the youth might exercise his authority in an unseemly manner '. If the older partner were a male chief, the tension would not be as severe. · There is not the same danger of unwelcome usurpation, or competition for supremacy ' , as there was of discontent and unfaithfulness (ibid.).

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The concept of submissiveness as a feature of feminine behaviour and personality was not unproblematic for the mission women themselves, as the reminder that the Christian conscience was the ultimate arbiter of authority hinted. Most certainly the women did not equate ' submission with any notion of passivity, weakness or inefectualness. Courage, determination in a rightful cause, moderate assertiveness, were all qualities the American women often displayed and certainly valorised. Indeed such attributes were essential if women were to engage, as seemed essential, in charitable and religious concerns in the community. As daughters they had shown deference to their parents ' opinions, and as wives they were undoubtedly prepared, should an irreconcilable diference arise, to yield to a husband's judgement, just as they assumed that a husband's interests preceded their own. Yet, partly because the gender division of labour was clearly spelt out in the marriage, and partly because much of their activism was conducted in a sex­ segregated style, submissive behaviour in the conventional sense seemed rarely to be called for. The notion of women's moral leadership in the marriage ofered in any case a countervailing source of power to that given the man by right. The mission treatise on marriage instructed Hawaiians that the husband was head of the wife and should love, nurture and care for her. Wives, in turn, should reside in proper conduct under their husbands, and, through the ine example they set in living without sin and in the fear of the Lord, would influence their husbands to the good (Clark 1 844 : 4). One reason that the mission women waged their campaign against Hawaiian women's customary amusements was the need to encourage those personal qualities of gentility that matched the submissive wife's role. ' The females, too, at the other end of the village are assembled or emale ights, that is, pulling hair, scratching and biting ' , wrote two missionaries about the boxing craze among their community (Spaulding and Richards 1 8 3 r ). Women used alcohol and smoked to excess. in both cases inducing indelicate, hoydenish behaviour. Involving women in the organisational and educational work of the church - teaching, leading prayer groups, preparing parish functions - not only ofered women alternative occupations but pointed them in the path of an efective community activism which could be reconciled with deference to the dominant sex. Hawaiian women were begged to change their ways, and in particular wives were urged to combine their interests more closely

34

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with their husbands. ' The property o f a husband and wife are perfectly separate ' , one missionary complained. ' Hoapili [a chief] and his wie have two perfectly distinct establishments, they rarely eat together. No man ever uses his wife's book and vice versa and so of a slate and other property, each must have one of his own ' (Andrews to ABCFM, 2 December 1 8 3 5 ). When Hukona, one of Clarissa Richard's servants, was guilty of ' delinquency ' while assisting Fanny Gulick, another mission wife, Clarissa insisted that the woman should remain with Fanny ' and that she live quietly with her husband and submit herself cheerfully to his authority and theirs ' . She could return to visit the Armstrongs and her relations after Fanny's coninement, but Clarissa did not want Hukona to feel that her services were indispensable, ' if she does not love her husband, nobody wants her ' (C. Richards to F. Gulick, April [ 1 8 34]). It was the kinship network, the ' relations '. that many missionaries realised was the stumbling block to much submissive wifely behaviour. Their own culture upheld dutiful deference of young unmarried daughters to the authority of parents. Hawaiian women, however, sustained links with their family of origin which superseded their ties with their husbands throughout their lives. Their roles as sisters, daughters, nieces took precedence over the marriage bond and represented the reference point or status. American women expected a married woman to have status conferred by the husband. Hawaiian women were involved in strong bonds of reciprocity with their kin or material, emotional and physical support, and such demands requently drew wives from the marital home. Increasingly, as European diseases ravaged the population, they were called upon to nurse sick relatives some distance from their homes. Maria Chamberlain articulated common exasperation with the strength of kinship ties. ' If we should give the natives in our family a whole hog or goat they would boil it up and share it with their friends and then perhaps go without any meat for 2 or 3 days ' (M. Chamberlain to sister, 1 1 March 1 8 30 ). The functional value of such behaviour escaped the missibnaries. However it was not merely the force of the kinship network which the Americans saw as undermining proper lines of authority. They abhorred the continuing power of the chiefs over the lives of individual members of the family except where this influence was exercised on behalf of the church. Mary Ives described such an

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incident that epitomised chiefly tyranny at Hana. A young girl had brought Mary two eggs to exchange for a needle. A chief, observing the transaction, seized the eggs and angrily told the girl she had no right to sell eggs without asking him. As the girl fled in shame, Mary recalled her. gave her a needle and remonstrated with the chief who did not take her advice in good spirit (M. Ives to aunt, 2 l January 1 8 3 8 ) . If a chief detained a Hawaiian in some place distant from his home and family, wrote Sarah Lyman, the man did not even express a wish to return, even if he was detained six months or a year. · Such veneration they still have for chiefs ' (Lyman, Journal, 4 January 1 8 3 5 ). For women to be dutiful wives. continuity in cohabitation and regularity in material subsistence was essential. and the Americans looked forward to the time when the despotism of chiefs would be ended, while they expressed regret at individual chiefly acts in the meantime. The teaching of submissiveness, then, was intimately related to the encouragement of women to lead a domestic-oriented existence based on a gender division of labour in the American mode. Mission teaching was explicit on this point. • It is the husband's role to work out-doors - he farms and builds the home and prepares that which concerns the welfare of the body. The role of the wife is to maintain the house and all that is within. It is her responsibility to look after the husband's clothing and the food - the household chores - setting in place the sleeping quarters and all else that is within ' (Clark 1 844). The wife was advised against deiciency in this area. ' It is wrong to neglect work and to leave the husband to keep the household. It is right to remain within the house and to work without daydreaming, providing food, clothing and all that is essential for life together ' (ibid. , 5 ). And by such domestic devotion, the wife would foster the husband's love for the children. The married couple should guide children, as Solomon said, on the correct path. If husband and wife loved each other, their love for their children would be great and the children would not abandon their parents in later life. The reality of Hawaiian domestic life was far from the ideal projected by the Americans. When Abigail Smith arrived at Kaluaaha in 1 8 3 3 , she was driven to distraction by Hawaiian women coming to observe her performance of domestic chores. She begged them to go home to their household duties and the care of their children so she could get on with her own tasks undisturbed. They asserted

F A M I L Y A N D G E N D ER I N T H E P A C I F I C cheerfully that they had no duties, and continued unabashed to occupy her yard and doorway (Frear 1 9 34 : 7 1 ) . On several occasions when Hawaiian women saw the Americans ironing they said, with heartfelt sympathy, · I pity you ' . The simply constructed Hawaiian houses with their sparse furnishings, together with the plainness of diet and dress, militated against the mission plan. The Waimea missionaries tried to persuade the people · to live like human beings ' , Lyons said, to put away dogs, give up tobacco, build better houses, make tables, seats, use separate dishes and eating utensils, make fences around their houses and cultivate the soil more extensively (Lyons, Report on Waimea Station, 1 8 3 7 : 1 ). The chiefs built Western-style houses, and eventually a few of the better-of church families lived in Western style with thatched mud-walled cottages sporting separate sleeping places for children, a shelf of books, an engraved map on the wall, home-built furniture and wooden bowls and spoons (Mother's Magazine, February 1 8 3 9). But for the most part the Americans considered the Hawaiians' homes and diet totally unconducive to the performance of a day's domestic work by Hawaiian women. When the mission women went house-to-house visiting it was usually only the sick, the lame, the blind, the maimed or the old that they ound at home - not a busy and welcoming Hawaiian housewife. It seemed to the Americans that vast material improvement among commoners was dependent on breaking the hegemony of the chiefs. In the meantime, as they sought a cash crop which might give Hawaiian men employment and livelihood, they also looked for an avenue of household production for the women. One proposal was to induce Hawaiian women to spend more time sewing and knitting, since this not only aforded domestic occupation but provided the clothing so sorely needed by the whole population, and the clothes would generate occupation in mending, laundering, ironing and storing. The most concerted efort was the attempt to initiate cloth­ making in the homes, that old skill of American women which was swiftly being overtaken by factory production back home. In I 8 34 a middle-aged spinster, Miss Lydia Brown, was sent to the islands to spearhead this enterprise. The mission board justiied the appoint­ ment of Lydia, · a woman of su perior mind and character ', in these terms. • It is certainly of the utmost importance to make employment. and to create a necessity for it. for the people of the Islands. And it is very desirable to exert every influence on them that will be likely

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to produce among them industrious, orderly families.' The Hawaii­ ans, thereore, should be trained in the domestic manuacture of cloth (Wisner to Missionaries, 2 3 June r 8 34). A number of Hawaiian women were intrigued by the process and keen to try it until they saw how coarse was the cloth of their own manufacture, and until more and more imported cottons made home spinning and weaving superfluous for the same reason as in America. Persuading Hawaiian women to devote more time to childcare was similarly a frustrating task. ' In our opinion ' . stated the Lahaina mission report in I 8 3 3, ' all that ever has been written on the subject of a mother's influence, has come far short of giving it the high rank which it really holds. Could the influence of a pious mother be brought to bear upon the children of Hawaii, then these islands might be transformed ... Otherwise it will be the work of ages to change the character of the nation's children ' (Missionary Herald, September I 8 34). The children, all the missionaries agree, were growing up like wild goats in the ield. The only way to get them to school was to seek them out and bribe them with books in exchange for attendance. To keep them in school. the teachers had to sustain the children's interest constantly, no small task considering that the knowledge which Hawaiian children attained appeared to bear no relevance for their future employment. If made the objects of anger or corporal punishment, the children deserted in decisive fashion. One missionary described their activities. ' From morning to night, ungoverned by their parents, almost naked, ranging the fields in companies of both sexes, sporting on the sand-beach, bathing promiscuously in the surf, or following the wake of some drunken sailors ' (Dibble I 909 : 26 7 ). Something had to be done. That something involved the formation of Maternal Associations on each station devoted to the task of explaining to Hawaiian women the serious business of rearing godly children. On occasions, with caution, a mission wife brought in one of her own ofspring for brief display. Instruction began with a sharp and anguished attack on abortion and infanticide. Abortions, ' base and inhuman practises ' (Lyons to ABCFM, n.d. [c. 1 8 3 6]), were suspected to be common but diicult to detect. Mercy Whitney, reporting that she had seen a child with an eye put out by his mother ' in endeavouring to kill him ' before his birth, commented also on the common practice of former years, inanticide : ' They seemed to think but little more of killing a child,

F A M I L Y A N D G E N D ER I N T H E P A C I F I C than they would an animal ' (M. Whitney, Journal. 2 4 October 1 8 2 8). Most mission women reported that the incidence of inanticide declined swiftly, however. This was very likely due to the high infant mortality rate from introduced diseases if for no other reason. The mission publication A Few Words of Advice for Parents (Sandwich Islands Mission 1 84 2 ) cautioned mothers against leaving their infants to cry in another's care while they went of wherever they wished. Infants should be fed only breast milk, not ish, or poi, or sugarcane juice. But beyond everything else. infants should not be given away to relatives, but reared by their biological parents in the one home. This common practice was seen not just as the chief cause of the high infant mortality, but the reason for the entire lack of discipline over older children. Sarah Lyman expressed the usual exasperation at this practice when, at a Maternal Association meeting at Hilo, she ailed dismally to compile a neat list of mothers and children. Thirty women attended, but it proved impossible to discover exactly how many children they had as · their real mother, grandmother, aunt, nurse and perhaps someone else ' would all claim the one child (Lyman, Journal. 1 7 January 1 8 3 7). Consequently, as the children grew more independent, it proved impossible for parents to exert strong control over them. As one Hawaiian mother after another explained, if they were nasty to their children, the children simply rolled up their mats under their arms and moved on to be welcomed by a related household. One Hawaiian mother described how she had tried to hit her disobedient child with the rod - the child spat in her face, bit and scratched her, tore her clothes, and then ran away for several days (Mother's Magazine, October 1 8 3 7). If Hawaiian mothers had been accustomed to govern their children instead of being governed by them, it might have been a simple matter to substitute alternative advice. But, said Fidelia Coan, · The most simple directions we can give, presuppose, in many cases, more knowledge, more skill, more advancement in the art of governing a family than they have attained ' (ibid.). It was arguable, from observing non-Christian mothers, that good church members were a little less likely to give up their inants for adoption and attempted to control their children a little more irmly. Certainly where the wife was an unbeliever, and a Christian father exerted parental authority, his eforts were clearly undermined : the wife would intervene if he tried to whip a child and set up a earful

MISSIONARY WIVES AND HAWAIIAN WOMEN

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wailing. · It i s true here, a s i n civilized lands ' , wrote one missionary, • that the female ills an important sphere and may be the means of doing much mischief or much good ' (Forbes to ABCFM, 2 3 July I 8 3 6 ). For the most part. however. even Christian women resigned themselves to a continuation of usual practices. We hear your advice, but we forget it quickly, Hawaiians goodnaturedly told the mission wives. Anyway, they were convinced that American children were born diferent : it was inconceivable that Hawaiian children could be so well-behaved. On occasions Hawaiian women could express gratitude to American wives for their unswerving reform eforts. Maria Cham­ berlain had that experience one pleasant day in May, 1 8 3 r . As an Hawaiian woman sat by Maria's baby's cradle brushing the flies of his ace, she said to Maria that Hawaiians were fortunate that the missionaries had come with wives to the islands. Formerly, she said, Hawaiians had known nothing of taking care of children ; gave newborn babies to others ; knew nothing of domestic happiness. ' Husbands and wives quarrelled, committed adultery, drank, lied, stole ... Now we wish to obey the word of God, to live together with love, to take care of our children and have them wear clothes as the children of the missionaries ' (M. Chamberlain, Journal. I I May I 8 3 I ). Such praise was a rare treat and one which the mission women in any case came to regard with some scepticism. Penetrating the Hawaiian mind was a bafling task. ' It is exceedingly diicult to ascertain the true character of this people ' , wrote Nancy Ruggles after thirteen years in the islands. ' The expression of the lips merely. is no sure indication of the state of the heart · (N. Ruggles to Rev. and Mrs S. Bartlett. 2 7 June 1 8 3 3). Another missionary spelled out one of the major problems of communication. ' Unless every trifling particular is named they rarely have the judgement to carry out the principle themselves. They suppose they have complied when they observe the particular act forbidden ' (Forbes to ABCFM, 1 0 October 1 8 36 ). Scholars in the schools learned to pronounce the words, but that was all. They did not understand the essential meaning. By the time the second decade of mission work was nearing its end without the reformation they craved becoming visible, many missionary women began to express the discouragement that had never, in any case, been far beneath the surace. They had God on their side ; they had sacriiced a good deal to come to Hawaii ; they felt exhausted in the cause ; the population was ostensibly Christian

40

F A M I L Y A N D G E N DER I N T H E P A C I F I C

and some change in women's behaviour had taken place. All Hawaiian women, however, ell ar short of the desired model of true womanhood that they had tried so hard to impose. ' What in me hinders their salvation ? ' Lucia Smith plaintively asked her friend Juliette Cooke, as she watched women drift away rom her instruction (L. Smith to J. Cooke, s May [ 1 8 38]). Many another mission sister echoed her painul self-assessment. Forceful and eicient resh male missionaries who arrived in Hawaii in the 1 8 30s were horriied by what they saw as the slow progress of the mission's work and began to question the decision of earlier missionaries to devote so much of the efort to the reormation of adults. Many elt a renewed onslaught should be made on the character ormation of Hawaiian children. Lorrin Andrews, principal of the Lahainaluna Seminary which was ounded on Maui in 1 8 3 1 to ofer advanced education to young Hawaiian men, was one who came to this opinion. ' We must begin with children or the most of our labour must be lost as ar as civilization and mental improvement are concerned ' , he told fellow missionaries with some vehemence (Andrews to ABCFM. 2 December 1 8 3 5 ) . He and his co-workers became disillusioned with their work with young men when they encountered sexual immorality both within the Seminary and among some graduate teachers in the community who used their new status to gain sexual avours from female pupils (Andrews et al. to ABCFM, 1 8 3 6-3 7). While others agreed about renewed emphasis on children. the teachers of day schools felt their task an impossible one. Children, said one missionary, lost the salutary efects of religious instruction by ' mingling with their vicious parents and others and observing all their heathenish and polluting habits and practices ' (L. Lyons to ABCFM, Report. 1 8 3 6). No sooner. reiterated another, did one alert children to their ' ilthy and indecent appearance ' and to the evils of quarrelling and lying than they returned to the ' beastly indiference ' to the conventions of good behaviour, or even the sneers. of those with whom they associated back home. The solution seemed diicult, but obvious. The mission must educate children, but in sex­ segregated boarding schools where they could be removed from their parents' influence (Hitchcock to ABCFM, April 1 8 3 6). The mission­ aries on Hawaii knew that their ellow missionaries in Ceylon were inding this a constructive approach. The graduates of the girls' and boys' boarding schools in Ceylon were marrying and then re-

MISSIONARY WIVES AND HAWAIIAN WOMEN

41

entering their ormer communities a s Christian leaders (Wisner to missionaries. 2 3 June 1 8 34). A beginning on this policy was made. Lahainaluna was converted to a high school or young boys in l 8 3 7, and the Wailuku Girls' Seminary, for girls aged six to ten years, was opened at a discreet geographical distance. At Wailuku, under the principal Miss Maria Ogden, Hawaiian girls received the training in true womanhood that the female mission­ aries had tried to ofer adult women. Their daily schedule revealed much. Girls rose beore dawn for prayers, set the tables, cleaned their rooms, washed, combed their hair and came down to breakast at the sound of the bell. Some girls were rostered to wait at each meal. The girls sewed rom 7. 3oa.m. to 9 .ooa.m .. studied till midday, and again after lunch rom 2.oop.m. to 4.oop.m. Another hour's sewing preceded supper at 5 .oop.m., ollowed by a scripture reading and prayer. On Saturdays the scholars scoured the dining room, schoolroom, tables, basins, aprons, plates, knives and orks ; they washed and ironed their clothes, neat uniforms of sensible cottons. They learned at the school the basic elements of a ormal education combined with an apprenticeship in female arts and crafts (Ogden to M. Chamberlain 2 7 June [ ? 1 8 3 7]). By 1 8 39, however, Dr Judd recommended some improvement not only in the quality of their diet but in the time allotted or physical exercise, when serious illness, resulting in deaths, occurred at the school. It seemed impossible, the missionaries concluded, ' to restrain them rom rude and romping behaviour, and to conine them to those exercises deemed more proper for females without serious injury to health ' (Dibble 1 909 : 284 ; Judd 1 9 60 : 9 5 ). The l 84os saw a slow period of disengagement in active involvement in the mission by many missionary wives. which they lamented in an increasingly hopeless fashion. It was impracticable for most children to be conined for years in boarding schools - the one area where a small group of women remained involved. Their eforts with the Hawaiian women appeared to bear little fruit. and the Americans faced the gloomy experience of watching many of their most precious converts dying prematurely during the epidemics which swept the islands. ' Surely this people are melting away like dew ... What we do for them must be done quickly ' . wrote Sarah Lyman (Lyman, Journal, 22 January 1 8 38). Another missionary wrote, ' We bless the Lord and take courage but. oh, what a dying people this is. They drop down on all sides of us and it seems that the

42

FAMILY AND GENDER I N THE PACIFIC

nation must speedily become extinct ' (Gulick 1 9 1 8 : 1 5 9). The mission women's nursing skills seemed more in demand than any other ofering they could make. By the 1 8 50s, there was often little to distinguish the mission women's daily round and preoccupations from many of their sisters' lives back home, the exotic character of their environment notwithstanding. A young American. staying in the Hawaiian islands for his health in the 1 8 30s, described his missionary aunt's activities, and the Hawaiian response, in an ironical yet sympathetic fashion : My aunt could work, scold, preach, wash, bake, pray, catechize, make dresses, plant, pluck, drive stray pigs out the garden. There was nothing useful in this wilderness which she could not do. She exercised an influence from her energy and practical virtue which bordered on absolute authority. As I walked with her through the village, her presence operated as a civilizing tonic. True, the efect in many cases was transient. But the natives knew what she expected. As she appeared, tobacco pipes disappeared, idle games or gambling were slyly put by, Bible and hymn books brought conspicuously orward and the young girls hastily donned their chastest dresses and looks. (Restarick 1 924 : 50- 1 )

His characterisation of this intercultural relationship nicely captures both the single-minded efort of missionary women and the apparent conformity, but essentially evasive, response of Hawaiians. It also exempliies the style of much outsiders' writing about mission women, the tendency to stress a comic element in the encounter. In truth, however, although the endeavour of the American missionary women could easily be described as comedy, it more nearly approaches tragedy. The American women attempted what was, given the circum­ stances, a constructive role in the process of social change in Hawaii which it is easy to overlook. Hawaiian culture was being subjected to intense pressure to adapt to the rapid incursion of foreigners into their community. The missionaries were only one element in these irst decades, and from an immediate economic perspective the least exploitative element in this capitalist and colonialist invasion. Granted that change in Hawaiian culture was inevitable, what in fact the American missionaries ofered Hawaiian girls and women was initiation into that range of skills and behaviour that would ensure some successful negotiation of the new order. Kaahumanu. the queen regent, was astute enough to recognise this fact.

M IS SIONARY WIVES AND H A W A I I A N WOMEN

43

The constructive nature of the American women's enterprise has been overlooked partly by the tendency of historians, themselves products of the same work-oriented society, to envy, and to enjoy vicariously, the lives of those Polynesian island dwellers who were innocent of puritanical drives. Yet there seems little basis in fact for describing Hawaiian women's lives as romantic or idyllic, either in their pre-contact world or in the period of change of the nineteenth century. This tendency to denigrate the missionary women's eforts is intensiied by the trappings of Victorian gentility which necessarily surrounded their agenda, particularly with respect to sexuality. Yet the formal and informal education in Western forms which the mission women, alone of their sex, were prepared to ofer would enable Hawaiian women to make out in a world increasingly dominated by this alien culture. Such Hawaiian women who were · successful ' in nineteenth-century Hawaii served an apprenticeship in the American mission programme. Yet ultimately the American women's activities would prove of only marginal value to the vast majority of those Hawaiians who survived the ravages of imported diseases. Clearly a wide range of cultural beliefs and practices were bound to persist, and among these notions of masculinity, femininity and personal familial relationships would prove the most persistent. Moreover, the American pre­ scriptions of femininity were based on an economic organisation which it proved impossible to replicate for indigenous Hawaiians. The male breadwinner, the independent artisan, the small farmer, the wage earner, supporting a wife and family in modest but independent comfort, was a dream that faded before it could emerge (Grimshaw 1 9 86). Eventually large plantations and businesses headed by foreign capitalists dominated, employing non-Hawaiian labour for the most part. The bulk of Hawaiians remained excluded rom the prosperity of this new Hawaii. The relative afluence of Hawaiian families and the Western gender division of labour desired by the Americans remained elusive goals. It was no wonder that their cultural constructs of gender characteristics proved unattain­ able. The experience of American and Hawaiian cultural contact was an ironic one. The Americans sacriiced much personal comfort, sufered home-sickness, ill-health and heartache in their efort to transform Hawaiian lives. Yet they tended to attack, along with destructive elements in the processes of foreign incursion, many of

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the very aspects of Hawaiian culture which aforded Hawaiian women some measure of autonomy within their own social system. Meanwhile the Americans were powerless to reproduce for their proteges the framework which aforded American women informal power within American society.

2 C H AN G E S IN T H E L I V E S O F ORD IN AR Y WOM EN I N E AR L Y PO ST -CONTACT H A W A l l

CAROLIN E RALS TON

The lives of women in ancient Hawaiian society and the changes that occurred in them in the early post-contact period have received little attention from anthropologists or historians. Twentieth-century anthropologists presumably considered the task of reconstructing the patterns and signiicance of late-eighteenth-century Hawaiian women's lives rom the disparate fragments of Hawaiian culture extant today impossible, while historians of the archipelago have by and large been content to ofer broad-brush, empirical studies of the major external orces influencing Hawaiian history in the last two hundred years. These historians (Bradley 1 942 ; Hobbs 1 9 3 5 ; Joesting 1 9 72 ; Kuykendall 1 9 3 8 , 1 9 5 3 , 1 96 7) have tended to present interpretations of Hawaii's post-contact period of a pre­ dominantly Whiggish nature, emphasising progress towards • civil­ isation ' over these decades. The most recent and least complacent general history of Hawaii by Gavan Daws ( 1 9 74) is deeply concerned about race and racial justice, but its long chronological span and emphasis on external factors influencing Hawaiian history have no• made possible any sustained analysis of the changing lives and expectations of Hawaii's original inhabitants, although some interesting interpretations are ofered in passing. Marshall Sahlin's recent exposition of Hawaii's early contact period ( 1 98 1 b) traverses the traditional territories of both anthropology and history, and many of his hypotheses have been most useful in my approach, but Sahlins' purpose is more universal in intent than an analysis of any one segment of Hawaiian society. In none of these works have Hawaiian women been a ocus of attention. Of course I am not suggesting that Hawaiian women can 45

FAMILY AND G ENDER I N THE PACIFIC be categorised or analysed as a single homogeneous group. In both traditional and later times the highly stratiied nature of Hawaiian society led to marked diferentiation between chiefly and non-chiefly women in terms of power, access to resources and standards of living. In this chapter the focus will be on the large majority of Hawaiian women who enjoyed no chiefly status, no privileged access to labour power or resources, that is, the ordinary women, who have received least attention from Hawaiian specialists in the past. Such an orientation will reveal certain misconceptions about Hawaii's history that have been created largely because the ordinary Hawaiians, especially women, have been ignored or their actions interpreted in Eurocentric ways. Women have most frequently appeared in the foreigners' historical records of Hawaii in terms of their sexuality. From the visits of Captain James Cook in I 778 to the mid-nineteenth-century whalers, ordinary women willingly established sexual liaisons with foreign males. It is necessary to establish quickly the unusual exuberance and insistence of their welcome to the irst British arrivals. When Cook anchored in January I 778 of Kauai, a northern island in the Hawaiian archipelago, he was most concerned to prevent any sexual intercourse between his venereally diseased sailors and the Hawaiians. But, as one of his oicers pointed out (Beaglehole 1 96 7, Part I : 266n. I ), despite the regulations designed to keep the women and sailors apart, [it] requir'd the utmost vigilance of the Oicers for the Women us'd all their Arts to entice them into their Houses. & even went so far as to Endeavour to draw them in by force . . . [T]he great eagerness of the Women concurring with the Desires of the Men it became impossible to keep them from each other.

The surgeon's mate, Samwell (ibid. Part II : 108 3, 1 08 5 ) , also commented on the ordinary women's ardent desire to sleep with the foreigners : The Young Women who were in general exceeding beautiful, used all their arts to entice our people into their Houses, and inding they were not to be allured by their blandishments they endeavoured to force them & were so importunate that they absolutely would take no denial. [W]e found all the Women of these Islands but little influenced by interested

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47

motives i n their intercourse with us, as they would almost use violence to force you into their Embrace regardless whether we gave them any thing or not.

The British remained only briefly at Kauai. but when they returned to the archipelago later the same year. the women's eagerness to come aboard was undiminished. Cook himself wrote (ibid. Part I : 486), ' [N]o women I ever met with were more ready to bestow their avours, indeed it appeared to me that they came with no other view.' In January l 7 79 the two vessels inally came to anchor in Kealakekua Bay, Hawaii Island, where they enjoyed a plentitude of provisions and female company or several weeks. Even after Cook's death and despite hostilities between the Hawaiians and the British, women swam of to the ships every night under the cover of darkness without any show of fear or concern for the havoc the English had inflicted on shore and slept with their sailor ' husbands ' (ibid. Part I : 5 5 9n. 2 ) , a construction of the relationship that at least the men put on the stable couple bonds that had developed. While the fervour with which Hawaiian women sought the company of foreign sailors diminished after l 779, and the expectation of payment for services rendered quickly became a part of these transactions, women were nearly always readily available (or example, see Vancouver 1 80 1 , I : 3 7 7-8 ; Iselin n.d. : 79-80 ; Reynolds 1 9 3 8 : 7, 46 ; Bingham 1 9 8 1 : 2 74-6, 2 84-9 ; Bennett l 840, I : 2 l o). Few of these early visitors bothered to consider the women's motives. Amongst those who did, some had the honesty to express their appreciation of the women's beauty and generosity. as they saw it, but nearly all who considered the phenomenon, frequently rom hindsight. deined the women's behaviour in terms of ' prostitution ', ' promiscuity ', ' licentiousness ' and evidence of the women's complete lack of shame, guilt and conscience (Beaglehole 1 9 6 7, Part I : 596 ; Vancouver 1 80 1 . I : 3 7 7-8). Such deinitions the evangelical Protestant missionaries, who arrived in 1 820, unhesi­ tatingly accepted and used. Twentieth-century analysts. while using terms such as ' prosti­ tution ' and · promiscuity ' , have viewed these women from a less­ judgmental stance and have suggested that sexual exchange created an opportunity for women to gain access to highly desired foreign goods, which in turn gave them greater influence than they had previously enjoyed in their communities. At the same time the power of kapu regulations over them was undermined and ignored. The .

FAMILY AND G ENDER IN THE PACIFIC

clearest articulation of this interpretation appears i n Daws ( r 9 74 : 5 7) : [T]hese members of the inferior sex, condemned by kapu to a hopelessly subordinate position in society, were able to command a new source of power and influence - Western goods - more readily than men, because a woman's body was the most saleable of commodities : and this in itself was a quiet but real revolution.

The exact nature of this revolution is not spelt out, but one is left to assume that, through their access to oreign goods, ordinary women (a point not made suiciently clear) enjoyed more influence vis-a-vis their menfolk than previously and that the launting of kapu, particularly those laws prohibiting women from eating certain foods and men and women from eating together (which were frequently broken on board foreign vessels) weakened religious controls on women's lives. Neither the reasons or the Hawaiian women's prodigious involvement in interracial sexual activities nor the nature of the changes in their lives that occurred in the early contact period are explored. Another assumption implicit in several of the twentieth-century analysts - one that was certainly explicitly stated by the con­ temporary missionaries - was the belief that the introduction of Christianity improved women's lot (Grimshaw 1 9 8 3 : 49 5-8 ; and see this volume chapters r , 8 and 1 2 ). These suggestions, that conditions for women improved post-contact, have been made in passing in works whose major concerns have been more con­ ventional. If the lives of ordinary women become the focus of analysis during the early years of contact such interpretations are diicult to sustain. Notwithstanding the intractability and paucity of the evidence available, I shall argue, irst. through an examination of traditional sexual philosophies and patterns of living, that the terms ' prosti­ tution ' and ' promiscuity · are inapplicable for the Cook period, and that later, when economic motives were clearly evident. their use in a cross-cultural context is highly suspect. Secondly, I shall scrutinise the hypothesis that Christianity was a liberating force for women from traditional activities and kapu. Problems of evidence beset all historians of women and all anthropologists seeking information about women's past lives. It is not possible to live and talk with the women under study to shed light on the lacunae or to re-interpret

ORDINARY WOMEN IN EARLY POST-CONTACT HAWAII

49

the one-sided views of male inormants and Eurocentric male analysts. In Hawaii the patterns of traditional life have been largely overlaid in the past 200 years by massive immigration of various racial groups and great material, technological and religious change. The observed similarities of pre-contact Polynesian cultures (Bell­ wood 1 9 78 ; Goldman l 9 7o : xxi-xxvii) tempts one to use com­ parative anthropological material - particularly about women in other Polynesian islands where the impact of foreign intrusion has been less destructive than in Hawaii - to speculate about the nature of Hawaiian women's lives in past times. But to extrapolate from the characteristics of Polynesian women today in modern Samoa, Tahiti or Tonga back to their positions and status in a pre-contact period in their own societies is fraught with problems, and to transfer those indings to Hawaii is even more tenuous. However work done by Penelope Schoefel ( 1 9 79 ) and Christine Gailey ( 1 980) on Samoan and Tongan women respectively, has provided useful approaches and questions when considering the past of Hawaiian women. Since Hawaiian civilisation pre-contact was non-literate, evidence to illuminate that period is available only in a wealth of oral material, myths, legends and genealogies. But over and above the diiculties of translating and interpreting these highly allusive, poetic state­ ments there is the more fundamental problem of discerning the relationship between such mythic, genealogical material and patterns of everyday life. Finally much of the material appears to have been created by males and was certainly collected by males, typically from male informants, which further compounds the problems of the historian investigating the lives and outlooks of women. In the early decades of the nineteenth century a number of Hawaiian-born scholars, including David Malo ( r 9 s l ), John Papa Ii ( 1 9 5 9 ) and Samuel M. Kamakau ( 1 9 6 1 , 1 9 64, 1 9 76), wrote about their islands' past under the stimulus of the missionaries - their teachers in the skills of literacy and knowledge of Christianity. Their publications form the nucleus of information about pre-contact Hawaii, but they can only be used with a full recognition of their chiefly and male bias and the influence of the newly imposed Christianity which all authors as pupils in the mission schools had necessarily espoused (Finney et al. 1 9 7 8 ) . The other major collection of Hawaiian myths and legends, compiled by Abraham Pomander ( 1 9 1 6- 1 920) in the late nineteenth century, must also be used with care and awareness of the fact that it was collected by a male

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European and largely from male informants almost one hundred years after irst contact (Davis 1 9 7 9 ). For the post-contact period the amount of evidence available from explorer, sailor, merchant, trader and missionary records is voluminous, but it is also overwhelmingly Euro- and androcentric. Nowhere in the records of Hawaii's past. pre- or post-contact, are the voices of Hawaiian women clearly and unequivocally heard. There is, I believe. no direct evidence of their thoughts, motives or experience. This gap makes a complete understanding of these women impossible, but a feminist analysis of the available evidence can ofer new and more appropriate hypotheses about their lives and experiences than have appeared to date. Certain underlying premises of a Western, middle-class eminist perspective, in particular those emphasising personal self-determination, should not be transposed unthinkingly to the analysis of non-Western societies. The notion of individual responsibility and action inherent in Western ideas of selfhood is peculiar to Western culture and is not one that can be used to analyse or understand people's actions in small-scale, non­ industrial kinship societies in which the well-being and nurturance of relationships within the community outweigh any or most individual's aspirations or desires (Geertz 1 9 75 : 48 ; Shore 1 98 2 : 1 3 3-44). Hawaiian women must be studied within the conines of the gender and community relationships applicable in the early post­ contact period, and Western concepts of selfhood should be recognised as being culturally speciic and thus most probably inapplicable in other cultural environs. Women and men : power and sexuality in ancient Hawaii Ancient Hawaiian society was highly stratiied, dominated by great chiefs (alii nui) who ruled over whole islands or large areas within an island. According to legend the position of alii nui could be held by a woman of high birth, but it seems to have occurred rarely (Pratt 1 9 20 : 1 0 ; Sahlins and Barrere 1 9 7 3 : 1 9 ). Below the alii nui there was a complex gradation of chiefs and priests, both male and female, who, at the lower end of the scale, blended into the ranks of the commoners : the farmers, ishermen and craftsmen and women who made up the bulk of the population (Malo i 9 5 1 : 5 8-62, 1 8 7-8 ; Kuykendall l 9 3 8 : 9- IO). Given the uncertainty of pre-contact demographic data it is extremely diicult to estimate the size or the

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SI

precise constituency of the chiefly elite, but it seems highly improbable that as a whole it was greater than one-tenth of the total population (Schmitt I 9 6 8 : 3-45 ; Sahlins and Barrere I 9 7 3 : 3 8n.9). 1 In terms of political, economic and religious power there was a pronounced diferentiation between chiefly and non-chiefly people. Relations between the sexes and indigenous conceptions of the nature of male and female are, however, more diicult to establish and analyse. Despite statements by several Hawaiian specialists (Beckwith I 9 3 2 : 22 ; Handy and Green I 9 72 : 3 I 6-I 7), it is incorrect to claim categorically that men were considered sacred, women profane (see Chapter 3 this volume). In some circumstances such designations may have been correct - for example, during certain religious rituals and several other exclusively male activities (deep-sea ishing, canoe building or preparation or war) when the persons, precincts and tools involved were considered sacred and were governed by strict regulations. Women were excluded rom such areas, and for the duration of such activities no man was allowed to have sexual intercourse with a woman. But those men not participating, frequently non-chiely men, were also excluded and bound by the same kapu (often seclusion within houses and silence) as women. At other times women, especially chiefly women, were believed to be kapu (Malo I 9 5 I : I 3 9 ; Handy and Pukui I 9 5 8 : I 9 9 ) while men's status was unmarked in terms of sanctity. Menstruating and parturient women's activities were restricted by kapu, but whether because such conditions and/or substances were considered spiritually polluting or potent is diicult to ascertain. Hanson ( I 98 2 ) has put forward a cogent argument suggesting that Polynesian women at menstruation and parturition were considered to be particularly close to the gods and spiritual realm and thus potent forces requiring seclusion (see chapters 3 and I O this volume). In a diferent context Sahlins ( I 9 8 5 : 7) has argued that ordinary Hawaiian men and women had complementary parts to play vis-a-vis the gods : men to wrest food from divine sources to feed the people, ' women to attract and transorm the divine generative forces ' into children. While the evidence remains at times ambiguous it is clear that ixed categories of sanctity versus profanity, or more ' There was no distinctive demarcation between chiefly and non-chiefly in Hawaiian society. Many who legitimately enjoyed chiefly status would have been involved in subsistence agriculture. I estimate that not more than one-tenth of the Hawaiian population were chiefly persons totally removed from subsistence labour.

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appropriately non-sanctity, were not permanently assigned to male and female in ancient Hawaiian society. Both men's and women's behaviour and activities were con­ strained by kapu regulations at diferent periods of their lives or during particular ceremonies, but overall I would argue women's lives on a day to day basis were more circumscribed by kapu than men's. They were denied certain foods, which were identiied with the gods, including pork, coconut, banana and some species of ish : and men and women could not eat together nor could their foods be cooked in the same oven (Malo 1 9 5 1 : 2 9 ; Handy and Pukui 1 9 5 8 : 1 7 7). The latter regulation increased the labour of men since it was their responsibility to cook (Malo 1 9 5 1 : 2 7 ). Also, as was discussed above, kapu were imposed upon women during menstrua­ tion and before and after childbirth (ibid. , 2 9 ; Beckwith 1 9 3 2 : 2 2 ) . These restrictions afected both chiefly and non-chiefly women. The special status chiefly women enjoyed was directly linked to their genealogical inheritance. Ambitious chiefs competing or or attempting to consolidate the position of alii nui sought ainal links with high-ranking chiefly women to gain new allies, enhance their own status and through such marriages to sire ofspring of higher genealogical rank than themselves (Malo 1 9 5 1 : 54-5 ; Kamakau 1 9 6 1 : 2 5 9-60 ). While paramount power required military and political expertise (achieved status), high genealogical rank (ascribed status) was still in the late eighteenth century an essential. however it was manufactured (Douglas 1 9 79 : 2 3-4 ) : hence the importance of chiefly women. At the same time, however, or ordinary Hawaiian women the signiicance of biological inheritance was greatly reduced because non-chiefly Hawaiians were denied the right to keep their genealogies (Kamakau 1 96 1 : 242 ; Pomander 1 9 69, II : 2 8-30, 6 3-4). No public recitation of commoner genealogies was permitted, and little of importance derived rom knowledge of one's forebears beyond one's parents. However in pre-contact Hawaii it appears highly likely that all women enjoyed some influence and authority amongst their kin as sisters and aunts - important clan members with substantial influence in their clan's afairs, although as wives they were less valued at least amongst their husband's kin (Schoefel 1 9 79 : 5 2 7-3 3 ; Gailey 1 98 1 : 3 6-7. 44-5 ; Ortner 1 9 8 1 : 3 8 6-90). The high level of uxorilocal residence amongst the ordinary Hawaiians underlines the value of women who attracted into a kin group extra manpower in the form of husbands and produced

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ofspring who were likely to be most closely ailiated with their mother's kin (ibid. . 3 6 5 : Earle 1 9 78 : 1 4 5 ). The efects kapu regulations had on women's diet and personal freedom especially, are diicult to evaluate. Baldly stated, the limitations might lead one to conclude that Hawaiian women lived lives of serious deprivation and extreme subordination. But the nutritional value of poi (cooked taro worked into a paste), the staple of the Hawaiian diet, and the availability of non-restricted ruits, shellish and ish would have to be very carefully investigated before it could be argued that women sufered nutritional deiciencies because of the kapu. Certainly early explorers never diferentiated between Hawaiian men and women, whose general good health and physique they commented upon (Beaglehole 1 9 6 7, Part I : 5 9 8-9 , Part II : r o8 5 ; Dixon l 789 : 2 70, 2 76 ). Similarly it is diicult to know how strictly kapu on menstruating and childbearing women were imposed. Samuel Kamakau ( 1 9 76 : 48 ) claimed menstruating women were not allowed to walk on the walls of particular ishponds lest they be adversely afected. While this clearly imposes a restriction, it suggests that menstruating women were not rigorously removed to the pea (menstrual huts) during their menses. David Malo ( l 9 5 2 : 20 7, 2 l o) also claimed that, in the outer regions far from the presence of high chiefs, some men and women ate together and were less diligent about their religious observances and the kapu restricting menstruating and parturient women than those at the centre of government. In addition, the alacrity with which women broke the ood and eating kapu with the irst oreign arrivals in Hawaii reveals that they were well aware that no divine retribution would follow the violation of these regulations and that their only care should be to keep such activities from the chiefs (Ellis l 782, II : l 6 9 ; Manby 1 92 9 : 2 2 ) . This evidence suggests that throughout the Hawaiian population the influence of kapu was relative, being as fully implemented as possible in the environs of the ruling elite. but waning in influence in remoter areas, and that women on whom kapu regulations pressed more heavily had already tested its powers and understood from whence punishment was likely to come. Obviously in practice the efects of kapu were less oppressive and ubiquitous than the ideal formulation of the system would have one believe. Specialists considering women's lives have tended to ignore this gap between the stated ideal and the way kapu operated in daily life.

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Ancient Hawaiian philosophy vaunted sexuality. The cosmology explained the origin of the universe and all objects therein in procreative terms (Beckwith 1 9 3 2 ; Sahlins 1 9 8 5 ; Charlot 1 98 3 : 8 3 ) . Songs and chants were specially composed to the genitalia of new-born chiefly children, both male and female, and particular physical care was taken of them to ensure health, pleasure and eicient coition ( Sahlins 1 98 5 : 1 5-1 7 ; Pukui et al. 1 9 7 2 ; I : 1 8 3 ). The sexual act was a sacred act, both creative and a supreme pleasure. Adolescents rom the age of 1 1 and 1 2 enjoyed great sexual freedom, any ofspring of these casual liaisons were easily assimilated into society. Chastity was obligatory only or certain chiefly young people, and or dynastic not moral reasons. Marital unions were important at all levels of society, but monogamy was not jealously demanded and lie-long partnerships were not expected (Malo 1 9 5 1 : 72 ; Handy and Pukui l 9 5 8 : rn9-I O ) . Two popular games, kilu and ume, played by chiefly and non-chiefly people respectively, culminated in sexual relations between couples not married to each other (Malo 1 9 5 1 : 2 1 4- 1 8 ) . Double meanings, nuance and in­ nuendo, frequently of a sexual nature, were essential characteristics of chants, poetry and mythology, and occurred also in much daily conversation (Sahlins 1 9 8 5 : 9- 1 7 ; Charlot 1 9 8 3 : 6 7-8, 8 2 ; Grim­ shaw 1 9 8 3 : 503). Eroticism, the sense and appreciation of sexuality which permeated Hawaiian life and thought, was a basic motif of Hawaiian civilisation (Sahlins 1 98 5 : 9). The androcentric nature of the evidence on which this analysis is based makes it impossible, however, to know whether Hawaiian women viewed and vaunted heterosexuality in the same ways as it is presented in the myths and legends available. That they controlled their fertility through induced abortion and infanticide can be established (Kamakau 1 96 1 : 2 34, 1 9 64 : 99 ; Malo 1 8 3 9 : 1 2 3-4 ; Pukui et al. 1 9 72 , I : I I 7-1 8 ), but neither the requency of such practices, the women's motivation nor public attitudes to them are known (Ellis 1 9 79 : 230-5 ; Plews 1 9 80 : 30-3 ; Handy and Pukui 1 9 5 8 : 79-80).2 Children appear to have been greatly welcomed and indulged, and child care was not seen as speciically the mothers' or even a generally female concern (Pukui et al. 1 9 7 2 , I : 4 9-5 1 ; Handy and Pukui 1 9 5 8 : 90- 1 ) . This ragmentary inormation suggests that 2

The late Norma McArthur, an outstanding Paciic demogripher, strongly contested Ellis' statements on the incidence of infanticide and believed that he had grossly overestimated it. Personal communication, 1 2 June 1 980.

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the consequences of heterosexual activity could be controlled by women or the care required, shared with male and female kin. In such circumstances the eroticism evident in Hawaiian culture may have been mutually enjoyed. While Hawaiian women's views of heterosexuality are prob­ lematic, male views of the nature of women's sexuality can be presented with greater assurance. Even though sexual intercourse was sometimes prohibited to men, particularly during certain ritual and other exclusively male activities, it is important to stress that intercourse was not seen as weakening or dangerous to them. The regulations prohibiting sexual intercourse convey the impression that of course men would prefer to retun to their womenfolk. but or the duration of the exercise it was orbidden. Hawaiian women, unlike certain of their Melanesian counterparts. were not seen as cunning seductresses and while indigenous concepts of menstruation and parturition are diicult to interpret, Hawaiians do not seem to have considered reproductive processes as particularly dangerous. On the eve of oreign intrusion Hawaiian civilisation had developed a complex cosmology and religious philosophy that revered the chiefly elite - the believed source of all fertility - and celebrated the procreative powers present throughout the universe. Stratiication within this society was marked, but not exclusively in terms of access to resources and power. Considerations of both genealogy and gender were still signiicant. Ordinary people looked to chiefs as the origin of all material and spiritual well-being and protection. Kapu regulated women's lives more closely than men's, but distance rom chiefly presence probably mitigated its force on ordinary Hawaiians' lives. Foreign men, trade and religion When Cook arrived he and his men were identiied as gods or great chiefs. or the servants of the same, and the Hawaiians acted accordingly (Malo 1 9 5 1 : 1 4 5 ; Kamakau 1 96 1 : 9 2-104 ; Sahlins l 9 8 1b : 1 7-26 ; Daws 1 96 8 : 2 1 -3). It was traditional practice to seek out a lord, the source of largesse, and join his retinue. The custom was called imi haku. (Pukui and Elbert 1 9 6 5 ; Malo 1 9 5 1 : 1 9 5 ; Sahlins l 98 1b : 40). Guided by such a principle, ordinary Hawaiians who observed the material possessions and the power of the oreigners presumably considered them worth placating. More

F A M I LY A N D GENDER I N THE P A C I F I C

directly afecting the behaviour of the women was the custom of ofering a virgin daughter to a chief in the hopes that a child of chiefly inheritance would result from the union. Such a child, who would have been easily accepted by a later husband, linked the family to a chiely amily from whom preferment, rights to land and material goods might flow. The custom, known as feeding the grandparents (i.e., the grandparents would be looked after in their old age by the child's connections), was called wawahi (Pukui and Elbert 1 9 6 5 ; Sahlins l 98 1 b : 40-1 ). Evidence that this was indeed the sort of relationship Hawaiian women and their menfolk hoped they were establishing with the oreign males can be found in a inal incident at Kauai, which occurred thirteen months after the irst landfall there, as the British ships sailed from the archipelago for the last time. Several women came out in canoes and at their direction a man carefully deposited the navel cords of recently born children in the crevices and small holes about the ships (Beaglehole 1 96 7, Part II : 1 22 5 ) . Customarily the umbilical cord of a new-born child was carefully preserved and put in a desired place later when opportunity arose. Parents wanting a child to travel would drop the cord at sea (Handy and Pukui 1 9 5 8 : 78). As a modern expert on traditional Hawaiian practices (Pukui 1 9 72 , I : 1 84) stated : ' Cook was irst thought to be the god Lono, and his ship his " floating island " . What woman wouldn't want her baby's piko [navel cord] there ?'3 These cultural practices clearly inluenced the ordinary Hawaiian women's enthusiastic welcome of Cook and his men and substan­ tiates the foreigners' claim that only non-chiely women were involved (Sahlins l 9 8 1 b : 40-1 ; Cook and King 1 784, III : 1 30-1 ) . For chiefly women there was n o similar cultural imperative urging them into the oreigners' embrace. How willingly ordinary women 3

At Kauai, early in I 778, the strangers had been treated with great respect and the evidence suggests that perhaps some Hawaiians were unsure whether they were gods or not. Ten months later, however. when the ships reappeared, Cook was clearly identiied with Lono the god of harvests and fertility. The coincidence between the timing of Cook's two arrivals in the archipelago, the appearance of his vessels under full sail and his route around Hawaii Island on the one hand, and the symbols, practices and timing of the major Lono festival on the other. were extraordinary, and there is no doubt that by November I 778 the news of Cook's irst appearance at Kauai had travelled throughout the archipelago. All these factors helped to convince many Hawaiians that Cook was the living manifestation of Lono, whom Hawaiians had always believed would return to them.

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ofered themselves either to known chiefs or mysterious white strangers is impossible to establish, but the milieu in which these young women were brought up and socialised, and their respon­ siveness to kin and community well-being, must be taken into consideration. The term ' prostitution ' , with its undeniable sexist and moralistic connotations, is inapplicable as a description of the women's behaviour during this period. Western, Christian precepts have judged casual sexual encounters in which money or material favours are exchanged as a degradation and debasement of virtue or honour, but usually only for the female involved. The woman receiving the money or goods is deemed a prostitute, the man receiving the service is neutrally deined as a client. In ancient Hawaiian society no such value judgements about casual sexual liaisons were made, nor presumably was such an encounter seen as an asymmetrical sale or service but rather as a mutually pleasurable experience. For these reasons the judgements which are implicit and inseparable from the word ' prostitution ' make its use in the Hawaiian context untenable. ' Prostitution ' implies very much more than the sale of sexual services. During Cook's visits the Hawaiian women were seeking status and influence through their unions with the oreigners. Their concepts of sexuality and the supernatural sources of power and material goods commended their behaviour, and as the British sources make clear, during these irst encounters no payment was sought. Of course as Hawaii became established as a source of food supplies and manpower for the northwest coast American fur trade in the l 78os, numerous oreign vessels visited the archipelago and the misidentiication of the white strangers as gods or chiefly beings was abandoned. After l 779 the ervour with which Hawaiian women sought the company of the increasing number of visiting foreign sailors diminished, but they were nearly always readily available. With the development of a sale of sexual services the material attributes of prostitution inevitably appeared, but the Christian, cultural connotations of the term still make it inappropriate in the Hawaiian context. At least until the 1 8 50s it is more appropriate and culturally neutral to use the term ' sale of sexual services ' rather than ' prostitution ' or the sexual activities of ordinary Hawaiian women with visiting foreign males. With the exception of Marshall Sahlins ( 1 9 8 1 b and 1 9 8 5 ), twentieth-century analysts of Hawaii's early contact history have

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not considered the cultural modes influencing Hawaiian women's behaviour at the time of Cook or later, nor have they recognised that the ordinary Hawaiians became increasingly dependent on the sale of sexual services from the l 79os onwards. As the number of foreign vessels visiting Hawaii multiplied with the development of various trades, the high chiefs used the power of kapu and their traditional prerogatives to establish monopolies in any article suitable or foreign exchange (Portlock 1 78 9 : 1 5 4-6, 1 6 3-6, 1 78 , 1 9 3 , 3 0 3 ; Vancouver 1 80 1 , III : 1 8 5-6 ; Ross 1 904 : 5 9-62 : Pierce 1 9 6 5 : l 72 ; Ely to Evarts, l 824 ; Stewart l 9 70 : l 5 l ; Hunnewell to Sturgis, 1 8 30 ; Gulick to Anderson, 1 8 3 3 ; Ralston 1 984 : 2 5-7). While the chiefs rarely were able to enorce a total monopoly, the commoners' trading opportunities were severely curtailed with the exception of the sale of sexual services, an activity the chiefs were unable to prohibit, although at times they attempted to take a cut of the women's earnings (lselin n.d. : 79-80 ; Daws 1 9 6 6 : 66). As early as 1 804 a Russian explorer in Hawaii (Tumarkin 1 9 79 : 1 29 ) claimed that chiefly exploitation of the ordinary Hawaiians' labour and crops, and their virtual monopoly over incoming foreign goods, forced the women to be willing · prostitutes ', and later at least one missionary on a remote station on Hawaii Island (Unsigned 1 8 3 5 ) recognised that the poverty of many of his female followers was a major reason • why they often yielded ' . After the irst contact with Cook's men the underlying motivation for the ordinary women's participation in sexual activities with foreigners changed. They were no longer seeking status and influence through these liaisons, but their apparent willingness to be involved in the trade was sustained by their desire for Western goods and, beore the 1 8 20s at least, by their open attitudes to sexuality. The most dramatic change in sexual philosophies and conceptions of women occurred with the introduction of Christianity after 1 8 20. The arrival of the Christian evangelists occurred after the abolition of the kapu system in l 8 l 9 (Kuykendall l 9 3 8 : 6 l -70 : Kamakau 1 9 6 1 : 2 1 9-28 ; Webb 1 9 6 5 : 2 1 -3 9). For decades the kapu had been under threat rom both the foreigners, who consciously and unconsciously violated its regulations and who clearly sufered no supernatural retribution, and from the islanders themselves. Chiefs flouted kapu that restricted their contacts with oreigners and introduced new ones, which had no traditional sanctions or justiication, to enhance their trading opportunities (Vancouver

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1 80 1 , V : 7- 1 2 ; Sahlins 1 9 8 1 b : 44-6 ; Ralston 1 9 84 : 2 5 ) . Similarly the Hawaiian people had knowingly and willingly broken kapu in their pursuit of Western trade goods. Foreigners found that their Hawaiian consorts needed little encouragement to eat food tra­ ditionally orbidden them and to eat with them (Ellis 1 782, II : 1 69 ; Beaglehole 1 96 7 , Part 11 : 1 1 8 1 ; Manby 1 92 9 : 2 2 ; Campbell 1 9 6 7 : 1 3 6). The women's male relatives also became involved in deliberate breaking of kapu when they ignored newly imposed kapu which chiefs had introduced in their attempts to monopolise foreign trade. Before 1 8 1 9 both groups found the traditional working of the kapu system restrictive and were involved in undermining and ignoring certain aspects of it in pursuit of their own interests. The scepticism which these activities presumably engendered was only one factor contributing to the inal abolition of the kapu. The two female chiefs who were the prime movers in the incident were inluenced by personal and political considerations as well as economic, but in this context it is most important to point out that the dramatic change which allowed ' free eating ' and abolished the major public religious rites was accepted throughout Hawaii with very little opposition (Kamakau 1 96 1 : 2 5 5 ; Conrad 1 9 7 3 : 2 34). For many the new order legitimised practices they had already experienced and appreciated, although always under the threat of dire punishment if discovered by the temporal authorities (Dixon 1 78 9 : 1 0 5 ; Thurston 1 8 8 2 : 7 1 ). The discontinuance of the major religious ceremonies reed the people rom the burdens of supplying labour to build and maintain religious structures and supply massive amounts of ood or feasts. For ordinary Hawaiian women the abolition of the kapu did not result in marked changes in their lives or outlook. In terms of religious belief and practices they had played very little part in the public ceremonies. The private daily worship of ancestral spirits was the most important source of supernatural assistance and protection or most ordinary men and women (Davenport 1 969 : 9), and this was not directly afected by the abolition of the kapu. Adherence to at least the observable public demands of Christianity, which was made obligatory on all Hawaiians by chiefly decree in 1 8 2 5 , was to have much greater long-term efect (Bingham 1 9 8 1 : Chapter I O , 1 1 ; Kuykendall 1 9 3 8 : Chapter 7). The missionaries had brought with them a number of precon­ ceptions about the position of women in traditional Hawaiian

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society. With a slight knowledge of the prohibitions and constraints imposed on women's lives under the kapu system they believed Hawaiian women were servile, degraded and over-worked, and that an important part of their mission would be to improve their lot, lifting them rom bestial ignorance and dependence to a state of knowledge and dignity (Grimshaw 1 9 8 3 : 49 8-9) . On closer acquain­ tance the missionaries were surprised and shocked to discover the amount of power and respect many women, not just those of chiefly rank, enjoyed. In 1 8 2 3 the leader of the mission (Bingham 1 98 1 : 1 84 ) admitted, ' The females of rank at the islands, and even those without rank, have, by some means, secured to themselves a high degree of attention and respect rom their husbands and others. ' Over a decade later another missionary ( [Lyons] 1 8 3 6 ) lamented, ' Paul's injunctions are not observed on the Sandwich Islands. Women often usurp authority over the men & hold the reins of government over large districts. ' Far from being down-trodden slaves, the women enjoyed influence and commanded respect from their families and communities which the missionaries thought most unitting. Nor were their lives over-burdened with work. On the contrary, the missionaries considered them lazy, promiscuous and lamentably unconcened with promoting domestic comfort and harmony (Loomis, Journal l 820 : Ellis l 9 79 : 2 3 2-4 : Judd l 9 2 8 : 8-9, 2 9 , 4 5-6 ). While the missionaries' preconceptions about the position of women in Hawaiian society proved illusory, the need or change in their lives was nonetheless imperative if they were to it the model of Christian womanhood in which the missionaries so fervently believed. They had unshakeable views on the proper position of women in Christian society, on the appropriate sexual division of labour and on female sexuality. The married Christian woman should be a docile, faithul wife and devoted mother restricting her activities and inluence to a circumscribed sphere. Since the missionaries owed their success and the right to permanent residence to the chiely elite, especially a number of emale chiefs who favoured them, these demands pressed most heavily on ordinary Hawaiian women (Gailey 1 9 80 : 3 14).4 The chiefly women's domineering authoritarian attitudes and treatment of their people were overlooked by many missionaries who relied on their power to enorce the initial conversion of the archipelago and then to impose 4

Gailey made this point with reference to Tongan women, but it is equally applicable in the Hawaiian context.

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the legal codes the missionaries considered essential to efect their ends. But it was the lives of the ordinary women that became the focus of mission concern and active interference. The missionaries' views of sexuality could not have been more opposed to those of ancient Hawaii. What or one was a source of shame, anxiety and frustration was for the other a source of great pleasure, aesthetic beauty and religious airmation of life. Once initial conversion had been efected the missionaries were determined through legal and religious means to erase the Hawaiians' positive sexual concepts and replace them with ' proper · feelings of guilt, shame and the need or modesty in speech, dress and behaviour. With the support of several ruling female and male chiefs they attempted to stamp out all extramarital sexual activities (Kuykendall 1 9 3 8 : 1 2 2-3 ; Bradley 1 94 2 : 1 5 8, 1 76-8 2 ; Bingham 1 9 8 1 : 2 74-6, 2 84-9). ' Blue ' laws were promulgated and for brief periods. particularly in the 1 8 20s. they were rigorously enforced, disrupting the movement of women onto the ships in port and closing dance­ halls. saloons and taverns. But their efectiveness was always short­ lived (Kuykendall 1 9 3 8 : 1 2 3 ; Daws 1 9 74 : 76-8 1 ). In 1 843. during a brief interregnum in Hawaiian sovereignty, the ' blue ' laws were oicially repealed and the missionaries in the outer districts lamented the number of young women who hastened of to the port towns of Lahaina and Honolulu (Bishop to Anderson, 1 843 ; Chamberlain to Anderson, 1 84 3 ; Bond to Secretary, 1 844). The laws were reimposed a few months later, but in 1 84 7 a missionary (Armstrong to Anderson. 1 84 7) claimed that four-ifths of the money received by merchants rom Hawaiians in Honolulu and Lahaina were the wages of licentiousness. Missionary evidence has to be used with caution, and that on the scandalous sexual practices of the Hawaiians is particularly suspect ; but while four-ifths may be exaggerated, it is clear from commercial evidence that the merchants' business with the ordinary Hawaiians was always greatest when ships were in port and that women were substantial customers (Reynolds, Journal. 1 8 2 3- 1 843 ; Daws 1 9 6 7 : 89-90). Finally, in the early 1 8 5 os, the crime statistics kept for Honolulu suggest that after 30 years of Christian indoctrination the Hawaiians found the commandments prohibiting adultery and other sexual mis­ demeanours the most diicult to obey (Schmitt 1 966b : 3 2 5-3 2 ) . But while the ' blue ' laws proved inefectual in changing Hawaiian women's attitudes to the sale of sexual services, this was not the missionaries' only level of attack.

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The control Hawaiian women had had over their fertility, through abortion and infanticide, was unacceptable to the missionaries who denounced such practices as unnatural, unwomanly and contrary to Christian doctrine (Ellis 1 9 79 : 2 30-5 ; Judd 1 92 8 : 29). The efects of such denunciations were and are unmeasurable as far as abortion is concerned. It would appear, however. that there was a decrease in infanticide to a point where, by the 1 8 20s and 1 8 30s, it had virtually disappeared, but whether in response to missionary admonition or to the Hawaiians' recognition of the decline in their numbers since l 7 78 is impossible to tell (Bishop l 8 3 8 : 5 7 ; Plews 1 9 80 : 3 1-3 ; Schmitt 1 9 6 8 : 3-4 5 , 1 9 7 1 : 2 3 7-43 ) . After 1 8 2 5 any married Hawaiian woman who remained childless was closely questioned by the missionaries and was liable to excommunication rom the church if she were believed to have committed either abortion or inanticide. One cause of infertility the missionaries did accept was introduced venereal diseases, the ravages of which were apparent amongst the Hawaiians from Cook's second visit onwards (Ellis l 782, II : 73-6 ; Pirie 1 9 72 : 1 8 7-206 ; and see Chapter 1 2 this volume). To the missionaries these diseases were the just punishment of the Lord for the Hawaiians' lasciviousness and debauchery. Many of them believed that the very blood of the Hawaiians had become polluted through sexual ' promiscuity ' and that it in turn was a major factor in Hawaii's population decline (Bishop 1 8 3 8 : 5 2-66 ; Chapin 1 8 3 8 : 2 5 7-8). Twentieth-century demographers have been less certain whether venereal diseases signiicantly afected fertility rates, and it is clear that the introduction of new epidemic diseases and foreign irearms had a more immediate efect on the Hawaiian population (Schmitt l 9 66a : 300-4, 1 9 6 8 : 3-4 5 , 1 9 7 1 : 2 3 7-4 3 , 1 9 73 ; Pirie 1 9 72 : 1 8 7-206 ; McArthur pers. comm.). The people, however, could not ignore the presence of venereal diseases and the bitter toll on physical beauty, health and pleasurable sexual activity they had taken. Confronted with the vehemence and apparent cogency of the missionaries' explanations and ethics, perhaps some Hawaiians were led to reconsider traditional sexual philosophies. Missionary wives set the appropriate example to the female converts of dutiful, modest womanhood which they should now espouse. Schools established by the mission for Hawaiian girls taught sewing, an essential skill if everyone was to be decently clothed, cooking, traditionally a male responsibility, flower gardening and other genteel occupations (Judd l 9 2 8 : 70 ; Bradley l 942 : 34 7-8 ;

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Chapter l this volume). The teaching of English to schoolgirls was considered inappropriate since it would only increase their attractiveness to foreign males (see Chapter 1 2 this volume) , while other academic subjects could not be itted into an already crowded domestic curriculum (Bailey to Anderson, 1 84 3 ). Women's in­ fluence, particularly as sisters and aunts, over their extended kin groups was considered unseemly by the missionaries who en­ couraged them to restrict their sphere to their immediate families. A statement published in a newspaper in 1 8 5 0 (The Polynesian, 1 8 50) outlined succinctly the roles and life patterns missionaries wanted Hawaiians to assume : You should act thus. Let the wife remain at home and put the house in order, and the husband go out and cultivate the land, day by day. Be industrious and it up your houses and house lots, furnish yourselves with seats. beds. plates, bowls, knives, spoons and glasses ; provide separate sleeping rooms for parents and children : and increase the produce of your lands. Rest not until you are comfortably supplied with all good things. Plant all kinds of good trees on your lands. Take proper care also of your children. that you be not destitute of heirs. Let the daughters remain at home with their mothers. and learn to sew. wash, iron ; to make mats and hats, and to seek after knowledge. The little girls should go to school. The older boys should go out to work with their fathers.

It is hard to assess what success the missionaries had achieved by the l 8 sos in their aim of transforming Hawaiian ideology and daily life. Some ordinary women had assumed the missionary mantle, conforming at least outwardly to the multifarious demands of Christian life. But remote from mission stations the results were less evident. Like the kapu system, Christianity did not have a uniform influence. On the outer islands missionaries reported, particularly in the 1 840s, that in their absence or the absence of chiefs willing to insist on Christian principles the people reverted to ' heathenism ' . committing adultery, dancing the hula and indulging in other unacceptable traditional practices (Conde to Green, 1 84 5 ; Rowell. Report, l 848 ; Lyons to Anderson, l 848 ; Anon. Answers l 848 : 5 960 ). Despite the unevenness of Hawaiian commitment to Christianity there can be little doubt that by the 1 8 5 0s substantial changes had occurred in the cultural milieu and daily living patterns of all

F A M I L Y A N D G E N DER I N THE PACI F I C

Hawaiians and particularly those of ordinary women. In ancient times procreation had been celebrated, and at irst contact Hawaiian women threw themselves into the embrace of foreign sailors in what was an enactment of their established cultural practices and beliefs. But with the development of oreign trade the meaning and signiicance of this sexual contact changed. No longer could it be encompassed within traditional practices, but it did become an avenue to foreign goods and thus one of many agents of widespread cultural change. Between 1 7 78 and 1 8 24 women frequently ignored, and inally in l 8 l 9 had been relieved of, one set of regulations. the kapu, only to have another set imposed upon them soon after. Christian precepts sought to inhibit and restrain all sexuality to the bounds of monogamous Christian marriage and imposed roles and living patterns on ordinary women which restricted the scope of their activities, limited the influence they could wield in society and privatised their lives. From the moment of contact foreign incursions in Hawaii had political, cultural and social consequences as well as economic (Rapp 1 9 7 9 : 5 04-5). These were not automatically detrimental to all Hawaiian women - certain chiefly women clearly beneited. But for ordinary Hawaiian women, while traditional Hawaiian religion had deined them as less signiicant than men and the kapu had restricted their lives in many ways, the introduction of Western, Christian models and mores which followed can hardly be seen as beneicial or a marked improvement.

3 DO M E ST I C STR U CT U R E S A N D PO L Y A N DR Y I N T H E M AR Q U E S A S I S L A N D S

N I CHOLAS THOMAS

Since the importance of feminist theory was recognised by some of those engaged in social and historical analysis a number of questions concerning the connections between social relations based upon gender and those based upon other factors such as rank or economic relations have been discussed extensively in history, anthropology and some other ields. In particular there have been attempts to better understand domestic groups and the ways in which labour within such groups relates to larger socialised labour processes and contributes to whole economies, and how, in a more simple sense, hierarchies which use sex as a means for social diferentiation articulate with other hierarchies. This chapter aims to pursue some of these questions in a particular context, in part by focussing on one amous, or notorious, Marquesan institution. A certain constellation of practices existed in that part of eastern Polynesia which various Western writers have called polyandry. What they were talking about was a situation whereby some women had a primary husband and, in addition, one or more secondary husbands, who were to some extent domestic servants. In some cases, mostly noted after many decades of destructive contact, the polyandrous husbands were brothers ( Chaulet l 8 7 3 : 74 ; Utley 1 9 3 8 : 2 3 2 ) , 1 but this was far from usual : the Marquesan system was thus signiicantly diferent from the fraternal polyandry which existed widely in the Himalayas and in other areas in Asia (Majumdar 1 9 6 2 : v) . ' Utley was in the Marquesas i n 1 9 30-_3 1 . This i s the latest reference to polyandry

that I am aware of. Roquefeuil I 82 3 : 308 and Dupetit-Thouars I 840 II : 360 are among the few early sources indicating that polyandry was sometimes fraternal.

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To talk about polyandry at all involves tying oneself into an exchange or a confrontation between Western notions of sexuality and domestic arrangements (which tend to be rendered natural and eternal within ideology), and another set of practices which tend to be characterised as foreign and peculiar. This foreigness is com­ plicated because ' polyandry ' is a complex entity in Western discourse, not simply a name for real things outside it. Presumably one would like to talk about the institutions which actually existed and were described by writers who visited the Marquesas up until the l 8 8os, and which lingered on in some forms for perhaps a half­ century afterwards. But to use the term ' polyandry ' says straight­ away that these practices were above all a variant upon the institution of marriage - a point that turns out to be questionable. More fundamentally, accounts of things foreign - whether they pretend or not to ethnographic scientiicity - lean towards a cultural play whereby strange people and strange institutions are constructed as Others for the purpose of self-deinition, a process which need not take place as crudely and as obviously as it does in the representations of savagery and civilisation which pervade nineteenth-century missionaries' and voyagers' texts. But diference could also be threatening, especially in the context of sexual roles and practices which cultures like to constitute as natural and undiscussed. The second and third Marquesan husbands could thus be irritating foreign bodies. While polygamy can be read easily enough in terms of the Western concept of unlimited male sexual appetite, it is not the done thing for women to possess men. Hence in some contexts the problem of polyandry may not be one of a particular logic of gender and domestic structures but rather of a European fear of a diferent set of relations. Edward Robarts, a beachcomber who lived in the Marquesas from 1 79 8 to 1 806, was candid enough about his apprehensions : ' In this liberty these people difer from any other class of people that I ever met with. One man may have several women, but or a woman to have several men I think is a pill hard to digest ' (Robarts l 9 74 : 2 70 ) It is disturbing, if not particularly surprising, to ind that the best­ known anthropological works on the Marquesas appear to rest upon similar dispositions with respect to the practice of polyandry. The most important paper ' Marquesan culture ' , by Ralph Linton, has a complex history (Linton 1 9 39). Linton was a member of the 1 9 20-2 1 Bishop Museum expedition to the Marquesas that .

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eventually led t o a substantial number of publications o n Marquesan ethnography and archaeology as well as various more speciic subjects such as tattooing and music (W. C. Handy l 922 ; E. S. C. Handy 1 92 3 , 1 9 29 ; E. S. C. Handy & Winne 1 92 5 ; Linton 1 92 3 , 1 9 2 5 ) . This work must be seen in the context of the world view which generated almost all of the Bishop Museum's anthropological work up until at least 1 9 50. One component of this world view was the notion that cultures and societies were agglomerations of discrete traits or elements which could be separated and classiied as though they were entomological specimens or ossils. Hence in the ield Linton's provinces were the archaeology and the material culture while E. S. C. Handy dealt with religion and social organisation. Some subject areas such as demography were not recognised while, as will become apparent, interpretations sometimes hinged upon such factors. However the very strong empirical orientation meant that the publications - paridigmatically the Bishop Museum Bulletins - were usually almost devoid of explicit analytical argument. Another component of the world view which is more important for this discussion is the total absence of any historical perspective. The object of analysis was always the culture or society of a particular island or island group. While it was supposed that this was an indigenous entity which had not been signiicantly altered by the expansion of the European world system, the results of ethnographic work under colonial circumstances - sometimes after appalling depopulation, and always many decades after early contact - were amalgamated with traditional sources and historical accounts to produce an abstract and detemporalised account of the culture in question. The unqualiied empiricism noted above meant that any profound critical scrutiny either of observations or of indigenous or historical sources was the exception rather than the rule. More than ifteen years after his Marquesan ieldwork Linton contributed some sections to a book by Abram Kardiner called The Individual and his Society, which aimed to establish common ground between social psychology and anthropology and show the relevance of psychoanalytical explanations to what was called ' primitive social organisation ' (Kardiner 1 9 3 9) . Although Linton's chapter on ' Marquesan culture ' ( 1 9 3 9 ) was presented as a synthesis of the raw data, and was ollowed by an analytical chapter by Kardiner, the account is on the whole far too simple and polished even when compared to the work of Linton's colleague and close associate E. S. C.

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Handy. In ' Marquesan culture ' a rule of social action is always unambiguous and discrete, while in The native culture in the Marquesas (Handy 1 92 3 ), as well as in other earlier and better accounts, there were always complications, exceptions and ramiications. Not because Marquesan society was anarchic, or no more than a morass of individual actions, but because its systems and structures accorded less easily than most with the models available to the observers' minds. Linton's description of the Marquesan domestic arrangements was as follows : The Marquesan household was polyandrous, there being usually two or three men to one woman, while in the household of the chief there might be eleven or twelve men to three or four women, one head wife and subsidiary wives. Well-to-do households would usually add one or even two wives to the establishment some years after the initial marriage of the household head. All members of such a group had sexual rights in each other, the arrangement constituting a sort of group marriage. A chief or head of a rich family would sometimes arrange a marriage with a young woman because she had three or four lovers whom he wished to attach. The men would follow the woman ; in this way the family head could build up the man power of his household. Only the poorest households at the lower social levels were monogamous, and there was much envy of rich households by poor ones. Household, rather than family, is the proper term for the basic social unit of Marquesan society. Households were graded in prestige. The basis of the grading rested primarily in man power ; the more active adult males the household had. the more work it could do, and the more wealth it could accumulate. (Linton 1 9 3 9 : r 5 2-3)

The accuracy of speciic points here will be returned to. While Linton noted that the process of attracting labour was important, and also postulated diferences between wealthy and poor households, he went on to imply that a ' numerical disparity of the sexes ' was the basic cause of polyandry ( I 9 3 9 : I s s ). Linton claimed that the ratio was ' about two and a half males to one female ' and suggested, despite the Marquesans' denials, that they practiced selective infanticide to the extent that such an imbalance would be accounted for. This imbalance became even more central in Kardiner's discussion : ' The fact that there are two and a half men to each woman is a basic social condition ' (Kardiner I 9 3 9 : 200 ) . E. S. C. Handy never quantiied even in a general way the postulated

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69

disparity, but simply attributed polyandry to the fact that men ' greatly outnumbered ' women (Handy 1 9 2 3 : 1 0 1 ). The cause for such a sex imbalance is rather problematic since there is absolutely no positive evidence for inanticide, while several observers, including some who had spent relatively long periods of time in the islands, asserted that, in contrast to other parts of Polynesia, the practice did not exist in the Marquesas (Darling 1 8 3 5 ; Stewart 1 8 3 2 : 2 2 9 ; Chaulet n.d.(a) 2 6 ; Anon. 1 8 24 : 44). It is of course the case that infanticide tends to be practised covertly and would not have been readily discussed in the presence of Europeans known to disapprove of such practices. But since it nevertheless was documented at other island groups it is logical to suppose that its absence from Marquesan sources reflects a real absence in Marquesan culture. The sex imbalance itself, and not only its proposed causes, are insecurely documented. While several of the earliest accounts of the group dating from between 1 79 7 and 1 806 noted the existence of polyandry, none mentioned the alleged sex imbalance. 2 The earliest igures bearing on the question can be found in the journal of David Darling, a member of the London Missionary Society, who worked on Tahuata in 1 8 34 and 1 8 3 5 (see Table 3. 1 ) . Motupu Valley displays the most pronounced imbalance with around 1 5 men per woman. In other cases the male-female ratio is less than 6 : 5. Darling's estimate of the population of Tahuata was 1 5 oo ; it seems to have almost halved in the six to seven years which followed. Even conservative estimates of 3 5 ,000 or the pre-contact population would mean that there could hardly have been fewer than 4000 people on Tahuata in 1 800, so that Darling's igures do not necessarily reflect an earlier situation. In 1 8 8 6 , Pere Pierre Chaulet, a French Catholic missionary, explained the existence of polyandry and the scarcity of polygamy by reference to the fact that · the men, in many localities, are more numerous than the women ' (Chaulet 1 8 8 6 : 2 7). The qualiication to this sentence is of interest since Marquesan culture was, on some islands, relatively homogeneous, and it is diicult to imagine that a practice which might have caused the imbalance such as selective ·

2 I am puzled that Otterbein ( I 96 3) in a tabulation of data relevant to Marquesan polyandry from five sources states that Lisiansky ( 1 8 1 4) and Stewart ( 1 8 3 2 ) give the sex ratios as ' a lot less than 2 : 1 · and 2 : 1 respectively. I am unable to ind any reference whatever in either of these sources to sex ratios.

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Table 3 . 1 Sex Ratios in the Southern Marquesans, 1 83 5 Island

Valley

Tahuata

Hapatoni Hanatuuna Hanateio Hanatetena

Hiva Oa

Ha'aiopu Motupu Ta'aoa Hanamenu

Women

Men

86 42 75 46 97 75 141 227

IOI 37 97 55 1 14 112 1 69 257

Source : Darling I 8 34-_' ; : entries under 2 ) / I , 3 / 2 . 4 / 2 . 5 / 2 . I 6/3. I 7/3. and

I8f3/35.

infanticide would have existed in some places and not others. However the frequency of contact with Europeans and the presence of permanent beachcomber, missionary and French colonial estab­ lishments were distributed unevenly over the group, mainly because some anchorages were more favourable than others with contact being channelled through one bay on each island in most cases. 3 It is signiicant in this context that an English trader who visited Taiohae, which had become (and remains) the central place of the group under French occupation, observed that : ' I had heard much of the beauty of the Marquesan women ; but nearly all have died in the neighbourhood of the French localities, so that I had not a fair opportunity of orming a judgement ' (Lucett 1 8 5 1 , II : 1 96). The book rom which this quotation is taken is full of anti-French sentiment which explains the exaggerated character of the state­ ment, but the suggestion of some kind of link between contact­ associated diseases or related efects. and any sex imbalance, is important. The only speciic data supporting a more extreme numerical disparity are provided in an 1 8 6 2 census of the island of Ua Huka compiled by Thomas Lawson, a beachcomber from England, who had then resided on that island for about 20 years (Lawson 1 8 6 1- 1 8 6 7) . His igures suggest a ratio of close to two men to one woman in two valleys, and about four men to three women in ' The bays through which most contact took place were : Hanavave and Omoa at Fatuhiva. Vaitahu at Tahuata, Atuona at Hiva Oa, Hakahau and Hakamoui at Ua Pou, Vaipee at Ua Huka and Taiohae at Nuku Hiva.

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71

another valley which had less contact with Europeans. However the whole sample consisted of only 1 4 6 people, which is not signiicant since the island's population had decreased by over 90 per cent in the preceding 20 years and can be presumed to have been considerably higher earlier (Kellum-Ottino 1 9 7 1 : ig. l ) . Unfortunately the early statistics provided by the Catholic mission tend to divide the population into Catholics, Protestants and pagans, rather than into men and women, and hence do not shed much light on this matter. Later censuses do not indicate a signiicant sex imbalance (Suggs 1 966 : 2 2 2-3 ) . All that can really be said about this material i s that i f there was a numerical disparity between the sexes from around the l 8 30s, then it must have been directly or indirectly related to external contact in some way. None of the diseases which are known to have been prevalent should have afected women more then men, although it may be that in the context of a general state of very poor health the additional stresses involved in childbirth produced high maternal mortality. Another contributory factor, that may also have been associated with any limited sex imbalance prior to contact, would have been that non-elite women were usually not permitted to eat pork. However since women could often eat pork at non-tapu koina (feasts) , and since low-status men as well as women were probably normally deprived of pork, this factor should not be overstressed. What is clear, however, is that Linton's statement that the aboriginal ratio of males to females was 2 5 0 : l O O cannot be supported, while Kardiner's assertion that ' this numerical disparity in the Marquesas is known to have existed for centuries before the French took over ' ( 1 9 3 9 : 200 n. 1 ) presumably reflects his imagin­ ation rather than access to a source which has altogether escaped the attention of Paciic historians and anthropologists. What Linton and E. S. C. Handy provide is thus more of an explaining-away than an explanation. The possibility of accounting for an indigenous institution in terms of an efect of the contact process was possible by virtue of the entirely ahistorical character of the Bishop Museum's epistemology, and necessary because of the inability of that problematic to deal with questions of gender relations and domestic economies. While the Museum's ethnographic reports provided a very detailed and complex grid of categories through which ' data ' was enunciated, there was simply no space for matters of gender or,

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for that matter, or a general and systemic picture which might have shown the logic of speciic institutions. The argument presented here is that these apparently domestic practices were indissociable from the wider system of social relations and hierarchies - which is thereore outlined in a general way. I am endeavouring to explain the situation which existed in the early contact period, around the beginning of the nineteenth century. There is no doubt that Marquesan society had internal dynamics : archaeological evidence indicates various important changes in the centuries up to 1 800, so I make no claim that the system described here had existed for any particular period prior to that data. However I would assert that the societies did not change signiicantly as a result of contact until about 1 8 1 3 , when the protracted visit by David Porter of the U.S. Navy, and his partisan intervention in local warfare, had a great impact not only upon social and political relations but also upon Marquesan perceptions of themselves and of their relations with Europeans (Porter 1 8 2 2 ; Shilibeer 1 8 1 7) . I have made some reference to sources post-dating Porter for the sake of corroboration and variety, not because it would have been impossible to base the analysis exclusively upon the small number of good, early sources. In the Marquesas relationships based directly upon land-holding were crucial or the structuring of labour processes, exchange and the competition in feasts that was arguably central to the hierarchical dynamics of Marquesan life (see Thomas 1 9 8 6 ) . While a number of writers asserted that the chiefs had a kind of overlordship over all tribal land - a state of afairs which certainly existed in some other parts of Oceania - an analysis of early sources makes it apparent that this was not the case. Some people. irrespective of their rank and social position in other contexts, owned and controlled considerably more land than would have been required to provide or a domestic group, while a signiicant minority of individuals had no land, and were obliged to enter into relationships of service in one way or another. The two most common subordinate positions were working on another's land, paying rent in kind, and working as some kind of domestic servant in exchange for food, shelter and protection. This hierarchical system was associated with the hierarchy of tapu grades, as will be discussed below, but was not exactly dependent upon it. Within this context there were several ways in which a woman might acquire pekio, or secondary husbands. As in other parts of

STRUCTURES AND POLYANDRY I N THE MARQUESAS

73

Polynesia, marriage alliances were important in various ways in gaining access to support and resources and in the struggle for prestige. Such political marriages were often arranged between chiefly women and inant husbands and for some years the women concerned often had one or more substitute husbands who remained part of her household even if the sexual relationship ceased. All children were considered as daughters or sons of the principal husband, the vahana haka ' iki. even if he could not have been the ather (Robarts 1 9 74 : 269, 2 70). In other cases men who had been the woman's partners during adolescence remained with her when she married an older and more wealthy man (' Account ' [Crook] c. 1 800 : 5 ) . It is also suggested that two men sometimes jointly ofered themselves to a woman, who chose one as the vahana haka'iki and the other as the pekio (Lisiansky l 8 l 4 : 8 3 ; cf. Melville 1 9 72 : 2 6 1 ). It should be pointed out here that while a number of sources state that polyandry occurred at all rank levels, the better sources indicate that it was conined to an elite. It needs to be recalled that most Europeans saw much more of life among the chiefly amilies and clearly generalised rom these observations. In some sources there is an assertion that every woman had two or more husbands, while other information makes it clear that relationships among the elite are being discussed (Radiguet n.d. [ l 8 60] : l 80 ; Lisiansky l 8 I 4 : 8 3 ). However the hierarchical system tended to break down in the course of the contact process and the practice may have become more widespread as this happened. This context would have been most consistent with the last-mentioned manner by which women could tcquire pekio when two men jointly ofered themselves in marriage - since the inequalities which appear to have existed would otherwise have precluded such a degree of social mobility. The more substantial houses thus consisted of a principal husband and a wife, several pekio, and also a certain number of male and female servants who were not pekio. In some cases there was also one or more emale pekio, that is, secondary wives of the vahana haka'iki. However such cases were very rare in the early contact period, if slightly less so later, and were clearly conined to the most senior chiefly families, whereas male pekio were a somewhat broader phenomenon. If an aspect of the relationship is to be singled out as the most important, then it would be that of servitude rather than the -

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conjugal role. A sexual relationship was a necessary component of the situation, but a man could remain a pekio after the sexual relationship ceased. If a woman had a number of pekio, then clearly the possible involvement with each at any one time was limited. Virtually all pekio were drawn from the kikino, the landless servant group, and were generally involved in domestic work.4 One observer, who gave a list of social grades or strata in Marquesan society, described the pekio as those who received subsistence from chiefs in exchange or agricultural and domestic work without even alluding to their role as · husbands ' or sexual partners (Vic;endon-Dumoulin and Desgraz 1 843 : 2 3 1 ). This aspect was also emphasised by Mary Ann Alexander, the wife of one of the New England missionaries who resided at Nuku Hiva for a short period in l 8 3 2 and l 8 3 3 : The women ... are abused by their husbands, often beaten cruelly, yet they will plead for having ive or six husbands. They say, who will prepare their food ? The irst husband is a chief and he must not work and it is not proper for the second and thereore they must have ive or six. (quoted in Alexander 1 9 34 : 1 6 8 )

I t i s implied here that the pekio are not equal amongst themselves ; that the second husband, or the irst pekio, should not work. Lisiansky observed that, · In rich families, every woman has two husbands ; of whom one may be called the assistant husband. This last, when the other is at home, is nothing more than the head servant of the house ' (Lisiansky l 8 14 : 8 3 ) . The · Account ' based upon Crook's observations also notes that pekio were regarded as superior to other male servants • not thus privileged ' (' Account ' c. 1 800 : 5 ) . This suggests that there was competition among male servants to become pekio, and perhaps some competition among pekio for pre-eminence within the servant body in a particular household. The existence of a possibility for movement within the servant group into a more intimate and higher-status position close to the elite would have muted the potential for antagonism in a society divided into those who held, and those who did not hold, their own land and other resources. The probable etymology of the word pekio rather supports an emphasis on the relations of servitude. The word has no resemblance to other Polynesian words for husband, but while there are no direct 4

There is some confusion about the sense of kikino. C. Thomas 1 9 86.

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75

cognates for pekio itself, the word kio has connotations of servitude, low-status or defeated groups in various eastern Polynesian languages. In Mangarevan and Rapan, for example, kio was glossed as servant, slave or tiller of the soil (Fuentes 1 9 60 : 762 ; Stimson and Marshall 1 964 ; Metraux 1 940 : 1 3 9 ; Buck 1 9 3 8 : 149 ; Pukui and Elbert 1 9 7 1 : Hanson 1 9 70 : 2 2 : Tregear 1 8 99 : 3 2 ) . Pe has various senses, one of which is the verb to copulate : hence pekio probably simply meant originally ' a servant who copulates '. But there were numerous other words for servant and the position had clearly become institutionalised to a greater degree than this simple gloss would imply. It should be pointed out that there were exceptional occasions when chiefly men became secondary husbands. This seems to have occurred when a particularly strong association between a person or a chiefly family and another chiefly family was desired : there is no evidence that chiefly pekio acted as servants, or lost their tapu character. A Nukuhivan chiefly woman named Paetini was reported as having several husbands of chiefly rank (Browning 1 8 3 2- 1 8 3 6) . Marquesan gender relations and domestic economies cannot be pursued further without going into the question of the nature of the tapu system and its implications. Most early writers and later analysts saw tapu above all as a system of prohibitions which placed repressive constraints upon women's behaviour and devalued their activities, and elevated sacred male things and male work (e.g., Bicknell l 8 s s : 2 7 ) . The peculiarity of these practices, as well as their pervasiveness and centrality in Marquesan culture, meant that they were written about extensively by the Europeans who were mainly concerned to show up the absurdity of the customs and hence produced pictures of a random and confusing array of rules which, if anything, further obscured the ritual logic of a system which was obviously subtle and intricate in any case. The account of David Darling, an LMS missionary stationed in the southern Marquesas in l 8 3 3 and l 8 34, is typical of the more detailed descriptions. almost every thing has a tapu attached to it less or more. The Tapu is the making of a thing or person sacred. or separating them from another thing or person, [a] prohibition the breaking of which is often punished with death but sometimes only with disease according to the natives account. The Tapus are connected almost with every thing they do : sometimes they are only for a time and then removed ; Other Tapus are continual, such as sacred places called taha tapu, the women are never allowed to go on sacred

FAMILY AND GENDER I N THE PACIFIC

ground. or enter a sacred house called Jae tapu. Tapus are attached to persons, to food, to times, and to [ ] . Many persons are tapu made so on particular occasions some few are always so : - these tapus allow the Men to do what the women are not allowed to do ; and to go where they are not [allowed] or at least dare not go : there is a great deal of ceremony about the food at the Marquesas many kinds the women are not allowed to touch the men alone can eat it, other kinds are eaten by both sexes, sometimes together and at other times separately : even in the making of the Maa or Sour breadfruit the men have pits in Many instances diferent from the Women in which they keep their ood. All the Koinas or ceremonies at feasts &c are all attended with tapus of diferent kinds and lasts for days, and sometimes or weeks together, at these times the Men are very strick in the observance of the tapu they never go to their own homes all the time the tapu lasts, and they keep themselves from their wives. Some tapus are on account of rank and some are rom a kind of sacredness with reference to the gods ; there are tapus also which refer to the time a child is born ; and to diferent periods of life ; and also some at the time of death. Almost all things have tapu about them : such as the building of a house ; the learning of a song or tradition, the getting of the body tatooid or Marked with the tatau &c. The ire that cooks the mens ood must not be taken to light the ire with or cooking the womens ood ; the men may eat the womens food but the women must not eat that which belongs to the men, or of that which is cooked or beat up by the men ; the [men] may smoke tobacco that is got by the women, but the women may not smoke that which belongs to the men or is got by them. The women must not wear any of the cloth that has been won as under garments by the Men, the Men never wear any belonging to the women ; the men are so particular in this respect that they always burn all their old rags in case the women should get hold of them and wear them, they think that they would then be overtaken with disease. (Darling 1 83 5 )

These rules and practices d o not amount to a unitary system i n a simple sense : there were several distinct, although related, meanings and contexts of tapu. The rules concerning the body and movement in relation to it were perhaps the most obvious to oreign observers. The head of everyone was tapu, and objects which came in contact with it or passed over it had to be put in a tapu place or destroyed lest they be walked over by a woman or otherwise brought into contact with a non-tapu thing, since if such contact occurred it would harm the person whose tapu had been transmitted to the object. Usually they went blind or leprous, although a range of other illnesses and death in some cases were perceived to result from the violation of

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particular tapu. This logic could b e taken further b y regarding things which had come into contact with the tapu object or person in more indirect ways as having become tapu and requiring protection. Some people were far more tapu than others. and the more extended rules generally came into efect in their cases. Chaulet noted that if a leaf fell from a breadfruit tree onto the house of a sacred chiefly child, then the whole tree became tapu and its fruit could not be eaten ( 1 8 73 : 1 6 8 ). The shamanistic priests or tau 'a were intensely tapu. and lived mostly in seclusion at me'ae (sacred, usually mortuary, places) where they were attended exclusively by servants (u'u) who were themselves tapu (Chaulet n.d. (a) : 1 06-8 ). Neither particularly sacred tau'a nor their servants had any sexual contact. 5 It was also the case that a large number of particular orms of work and activity were tapu and were associated with prohibitions and sexual segregation. David Darling noted, for example, that a number of men engaged in making a ishing net were secluded in a tapu place and could not have any contact with their wives until the work was completed and the net irst used, at which time a ceremony to remove the tapu of the product took place (Darling 1 8 34-3 5 , 1 4 December 1 8 3 4 ) . Similar restrictions occurred during war, when people were learning chants or feasts or when individuals were being tattooed, circumcised or medically treated. It is easy to see why many writers have inferred that women represented a profane threat to what was tapu or sacred. The notion that the categories male/ emale and tapu/noa corresponded with one another has been prevalent in the historical and ethnographic literature concerned with Polynesia. 6 The word noa did not exist in Marquesan, but it is arguable that its equivalent me'ie is better translated as unrestricted or clear rather than profane. (The word is often used, or example, to describe the sky on a clear day.) Hence me'ie women were in a sense those who were unconined by tapu, rather than impure beings categorically opposed to male sacredness. A further problem with an account of the tapu system in terms of 5 Tau' a could be either male or female, although female tau·a were usually concerned with relatively simple spirit manipulation and curing. There were, however. women among the most sacred tau'a, some of whose names are given by Chaulet (n.d. (a) : 1 3 7-8). 6 Hanson ( 1 98 2 : 3 6 3 ). citing Dening ( 1 9 8 1 : 88). states that Crook thought that tapu/me'ie was ' isomorphic with the distinction between the sexes '. Dening's sentence is less emphatic and it seems to me that in fact Crook was one of very few observers who recognised a degree of non-correspondence between these pairs of categories.

F A M I LY A N D GENDER I N THE P A C I F I C

female impurity is that under many circumstances women and particularly women of high rank could be tapu. In some cases the people who were secluded while carrying out particular activities were women, while some chiefly women seem to have been surrounded by as many personal tapu as chiefly men. Some recent work by Hanson and Hanson, concerned primarily with Maori culture, provides a reinterpretation of these problems which is of wider Polynesian significance (Hanson and Hanson r 9 8 3 : Hanson r 9 8 2 ). The following discussion draws extensively from their analysis, although some modifications appropriate to the Marquesan context have been made. An essential point about the larger structure of Polynesian culture is that there was a basic division between this world. the world of living humans and light (ao) . and the other world of spirits. ghosts. gods and night (po) (Babadzan 1 9 8 2 : 1 24-9 ). There was a very strong sense in which agents in each world were continually manipulating things in the other : virtually everything that happened in this world was seen as the activity of or an efect of the state of mind of a particular deity, while humans had to manipulate spirits, or seek to create efects in the other world in order to achieve particular ordinary objectives. An array of practices such as shamanism, sorcery and curing ( which were of greTt importance in the Marquesas) was predicated precisely upon a system of this type. This was thus a profoundly dialectical world view since. as opposed to a more transcendental religion, the orientation was towards another world which is structured like this world and is populated by agents (atua) who are motivated, selish and reactive in the same manner as humans, and who themselves are projected towards efects in the living human world. The chains of efect leap endlessly from one side to the other, like the images in mirrors which face each other. The proximity between the two worlds arose not merely from their general interpenetration but also from the temporal continuities from one to the other. Atua were deified members of the tribal group, usually particularly powerful tau'a or shamanistic priests, most of whom were deified at the time of their death or a few years after. although a few were even regarded as atua while alive (Temoteitei 1 800 ). Hanson and Hanson suggest that ' something is tapu when it is under the influence of atuas ' ( Hanson and Hanson 1 9 8 3 : 50 ). Work, which involved the presence of atua, was tapu : people of high rank,

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in whom atua were present to some extent. were tapu : some kinds of natural growth and production which entailed the presence of atua were tapu. But most signiicantly. activities which involved the movement of substances or persons from one world to the other were intensely tapu. Birth, at least for chiefly people. was usually accompanied by seclusion and numerous rituals that eventually led to the removal of tapu associated with the movement of the child into the world : corpses were not buried but treated and left to dry out in mortuary places which were intensely tapu : the activity of eating was. of course. highly controlled by numerous tapu. In this system human oriices. and particularly the vagina, had a central role as channels from one world to the other. It was as though a state of tapu attached to a thing or a person in this world could be absorbed or pass away into the other world through such a channel. Hence women were often used in controlled ritual circumstances to remove tapu at an appropriate time. Sometimes women could use these notions independently to influence events. for example by preventing men from going to war by saying that the path to be followed led to their vagina. Such a pronouncement having been made, to go into battle inevitably led to disaster (Chaulet n.d. (a) : unpaginated section after p. so). But this great potency was threatening because it was not controllable. If the head passed beneath the vagina. or came into contact with the lower part of the body or a mediating object, the head's tapu state would be absorbed or removed. The more tapu an individual. the more extensive were the precautions and prohibitions governing the movement of objects and persons in their vicinity. From the need to protect tapu people. objects and activities from the threat of the uncontrolled removal of tapu, can be seen to flow most of the specific regulations mentioned in European descriptions of this system. This account can also explain some practices which are altogether inexplicable from the viewpoint of the simple thesis that women were impure and polluting by nature. One such ritual was that called liaka tahetahe (probably ' to splash ' ) which was described by Chaulet as follows : To save oneself from leprosy when one has been detiled. or when one believes oneself to have been. one inds the woman who has deiled one ( i n suspicion or in act), and goes into a stream, the woman upstream. the man downstream ( both naked ) . the woman takes with both hands the water which touches her vagi na ( vai toto

a.

blood water) and throws it over the

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deiled person ; then they are no longer in danger o f getting leprosy. (Chaulet n.d. (c) : 34)7

Under these controlled circumstances. the vagina is a channel through which the tapu state is restored. Another practice suggests through an even more dramatic reversal of normal procedures that tapu could be transormed and received through the vagina ; At the irst Childbearing of a young Woman of distinction, her principal male relations sometimes prostrate themselves, so that their kinswoman may be seated upon their heads, while delivered of her child ; all being covered by the Cloth. If the men are of the tabbu Class, they irst render themselves common. for this purpose. Others. who remain in a tabbu state. are present on the occasion. (' Account ' c. I 800 : 1 2 )

The men's act o f prostration expressed that the new child's tapu state was greater than their own, but must also have involved a transfer of some of its tapu to them. This discussion thus shifts the source of impurity from the nature of women to the dynamics of the relations between this world and the other world, that is, to the problems involved in movement between po and ao. There is thus a very distinct diference between notions of this kind and ideologies that tie the fundamental causes of pollution to the nature of women. So ar as more general questions about the situation of Marquesan women are concerned. this logic makes it possible for high-ranking women, by reason of their personal tapu, to be far less restricted by precautionary prohibitions than women in general. One prohibition which clearly existed widely. and which was noted by many writers, prevented women from travelling in, or ishing from. canoes. (The non-participation of women in ishing from canoes in most parts of the Marquesas today is one of very few surviving efects of the tapu system. ) One writer described how women were obliged to swim around clifs or take time-consuming routes over mountains. rather than moving more quickly and easily by canoe, if they wished to visit another valley (Coan r 860 : 6 ). There can be no doubt. however. that some women could travel by canoe : Crook noted an occasion when a group of women from Tahuata travelled with warriors and apparently participated in a battle on the 7

This custom has been noted by various writers. all of whom however drew their information directly or indirectly from this description by Chaulet (Handy 1 92 3 : 269. quoted by Hanson 1 9 8 2 : Suggs 1 966 : 28 : Delmas 1 9 2 7 : 6 6 ).

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neighbouring island of Hiva Oa (' Account ' c . l 800 : l 2 3 ). The wife of lotete, a chief at Vaitahu on Tahuata in the 1 8 30s, came rom Hiva Oa and seems to have made occasional trips back to that island (Darling 1 8 34-3 5 ). It is even recorded that the daughter of Heato, a pre-eminent chief on Ua Pou who died in 1 844, could even go onto the most sacred temple platforms from which women (other than female tau ' a) and men of low status were normally rigidly excluded ( Chaulet n.d. ( c) : unpaginated section after p. s 3 ). A quotation rom Edward Robarts sums up the way in which higher rank could qualify or negate the restrictions which subordinated most women : Women Is held unclean. They must not come near the Morias [me'ae], nor walk over the place where the food is cookd, nor eat of food which has been beat by the hand of a man, except the woman is of the Blood Royal. She then may eat ood prepared by a man of low rank. But no woman of inferior cast is allowd to eat any food from her hand, or sit near her so as to touch her garment. (Robarts 1 9 74 : 268-9)

From one point of view, the institution of polyandry could be seen as little more than a logical consequence of rank overdetermining gender as a basis or hierarchy in the Marquesas. If a woman was of high status, then her gender did not determine what she could or could not do to nearly the same extent as it did or common women. At least in some other parts of Polynesia there seems to have been a notion that chiefly people were sexually voracious and could be expected to have more sexual partners or spouses than other people : polyandry or elite women essentially recognises and institutionalises these expectations. It is signiicant in this context that there is a good deal of evidence from other areas, particularly the Society Islands, for non-institutionalised polyandry among elite women. 8 It is important that the hierarchical system be understood to involve a good deal more than the high status of a few individuals. One important aspect of the overall system not alluded to in Darling's account quoted above was the structure of tapu grades. The most basic feature of these grades was that the members ate together under some circumstances, and while particular people could usually eat with other (more inclusive) groups of lower rank, lower-ranking people were excluded from the particular, higher-status tapu groups. 8

Cf. discussion and sources cited in Oliver I 9 7 4 : 8 V if. For some hints of similar things from other places. see Metraux 1 940 : 1 1 o . For a modern Hawaiian case see Linnekin 1 98 5 : 2 1 4.

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Lower-level groups were me' ie in relation to higher-level ones. just as most women and the male servants were me'ie in relation to the general tapu group. The basis for the constitution of, and recruitment to, high-status tapu groups is obscure : some seem to have been based on particular occupational groups such as priests, wood carvers. stone workers, tattooers and so orth . but others seem to have merely consisted of a few very senior chiefs or old men. t seems that membership was flexible, that people of common origin might be able to join the highest groups if they displayed particular capacities such as prowess in war. This flexibility gave scope for a great deal of competition, and admittance to these groups was probably quite central to the pursuit of prestige. A notion about eating which emerges from this material is that food was associated rather more with the consumers or prospective consumers than with those who had produced or prepared it. Hence, in some cases, the fact that food was prepared by non-tapu servants seems to have been unimportant, although it was vital that persons who were me ' ie in relation to a particular group not eat with that group, or sometimes not even be eating the same kinds of food at the same time. Some particular foods such as certain fish were reserved at all times for priests or chiefs. Crook noted that the important feature of these structures in this context is that · there is a distinction of class among the women ' ( ' Account · c. 1 800 : l ) . While David Darling was at Vaitahu a feast was organised by lotete's wife for a couple of other women of high rank. He noted that · many of the people ' had been involved in preparing food, and that · some considerable time ago. one very large pig had been feed f sic J as a buaka fpuaka l tapu for the purpose · (Darling 1 8 34-y; , 1 5 July 1 8 3 5 ). Of the feast itself. he said, ' only two or three women were present and permitted to eat of the food. There is nothing of an idolatrous nature any further than it being set apart only for the purpose of showing the rank of those for whom it was designed ' (ibid. . r 8 July r 8 ) 5 ). This was a feast in return for one formerly ofered by one of the guests : it appears that there were parallel spheres of male and female competitive feasting among the elite (cf. Chaulet 1 8 7 3 : 9 5 ). Marquesan society entailed a particular and complex inter­ penetration of gender-based and non-gender-based hierarchical social relations which involve ritual elevation and exclusion. economic appropriation and prestige-oriented competition. Mar-

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quesan society difered rom some other tribal societies in that gender was cut across and muted by rank and other considerations to a signiicant extent. All men were not structurally advantaged. or regarded as collectively superior, to women in general. The division of labour and appropriation of products within the domestic group were only partially organised on the basis of a simple sexual division. There were both some separate spheres of female activity. and also female involvement in non-sex specific activities. But efective agency in these contexts was very much dependent upon rank. To sum up the system rather crudely - while gender provided the basic relations among commoners, the sex of elite women was relatively unim­ portant. ' Polyandry ' was an efect of the combination of these relations and those of domestic service. rather than simply a peculiar form of marriage. Seeing it this way we deprive ourselves of an amusing foreign object with which travel books can play. but perhaps we gain a sharper analytical tool of wider use in the critique of domestic structures and gender relations.

4 T H E O B J E C T L E S SO N OF A C I V I L I S E D. C HR I S T I A N HO M E

DIANE LANGMORE

Missionaries were major agents of change in the Pacific region during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They were arguably more efective as such than any other foreign agents of the time due to their numerical strength, their dispersal, their tenacity. their learning of the local languages, and hence their ability to communicate. but above all. to their commitment to efecting change - a metanoia, as Burridge deines it ( 1 9 7 5 : 1 0 ) - in the lives of the people with whom they interacted. This change was primarily a change in the hearts and souls of converts, but an inevitable corollary was a change, to a greater or lesser extent. in their social organisation and cultural activities. Despite a popular image which sees missionaries as unremittingly and uncritically iconoclastic, they in fact varied considerably in the extent and types of change which they required as evidence of conversion. In this chapter I will discuss some of the changes in amily life and related aspects of social organisation imposed by missionaries of the four organisatio�s operating in Papua before the World War I - the Roman Catholic Sacred Heart Mission ( SHM). the predominantly Anglo-Catholic Anglican Mission, the Australasian Wesleyan Methodist Mission and the London Missionary Society (LMS ), comprised largely of British Congregationalists - and later suggest some explanations as to variation in expectations. not only among the four missionary bodies but even. within the constraints of mission organisation. among the personnel of a single mission. Here I am not concerned with the efects of the changes required of converts, but rather with the nature of the changes and some of the variables which moulded them ( also see Langmore 1 9 8 1 ). 84

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The pivot o f Protestant missionary endeavour was the mission station. Most were coastal. frequently built on a ridge or hill, with the mission house commanding a view across the rooftops of a village and its palm-fringed beach and out to sea. High ground was allegedly chosen because it was healthy. it caught the breeze and allowed warning of approaching ships. but considerations of supremacy may also have been involved. Stations were not sited in villages partly because they were often low-lying and unhealthy. but more importantly. the missionaries argued. so that the mission could become ' a model village in itself' to draw the people from their pagan surroundings to a ' higher ' way of lie ( Butcher I 9 I 2 ). On any Protestant station the focal point was the mission house. By the turn of the century most were large. simple houses of sawn timber with corrugated iron roofs, built on piles and surrounded by a verandah. Some replaced earlier bush-material houses. the missionaries arguing not only that European houses were more conducive to health and comfort. but also that they were ultimately more economical. as · native ' houses had to be replaced every three or four years. Besides providing a home for the missionary. his wife and children, and being the organisational centre of station activity. the mission house ofered ' the object lesson of a civilised. Christian home ' (Thompson to Abel. 6 January I 89 3 ). Lizzie Chalmers. wife of the pioneer missionary James Chalmers. described their newly established station at Uritai-Mirihea : ' The place begins to look like a little town, and all the people gather about us in a free and easy way. I encourage them round always. Our house and lives are open to all eyes ' (Lovett I 8 9 9 : �48 ). Of the 3 3 male LMS missionaries and the 26 male Methodist missionaries in Papua from l 8 7 4 to 1 9 l 4, only nine remained unmarried during their missionary service. The example presented to the Papuans was therefore that of · godly domesticity · : of the Christian, British and - because of their origins (Langmore 1 98 1 ) largely lower-middle-class nuclear family. The mission house was the domain of the missionaries' wives. Most transformed austerely functional houses into gracious bunga­ lows whose interiors would not have looked out of place in Brisbane or Birmingham. Papuans who entered mission parlours were confronted with the comfortable clutter of table, chairs. sofas. portable piano. silk cushions. knick-knacks. photos and anti­ macassars. A major feature of the missionary wife's routine was the

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training of Papuan women and girls in domestic accomplishments. Girls were brought into the house to work - with the dual intention of their providing cheap labour for the missionaries' amily, while learning the reinements of ' civilised ' living. (It is worth noting however that in the LMS males went through this process as well as females, and it used to be said that most of the elite of the Papuan LMS began their education in Mrs Lawes' kitchen. ) In the schools of the LMS and Methodist missions, girls learned the usual range of subjects but were also taught sewing which, among Methodist girl students, was the most popular subject. Cottage industries such as lace-making and mat-making were introduced at various stations. In the Methodist mission, where single women served as missionary sisters, their role was to reinforce that of the wives in introducing Papuan women and girls to the Christian faith and to the godly domesticity which was seen as its concomitant. They taught in the schools, supervised domestic training in the mission house and visited nearby villages where they conducted religious services and provided basic medical and welfare services. In 1 9 1 2 , when the mission was agitated by a contemporary debate on depopulation of the southeast of Papua, the sisters added to their curriculum talks on ' physiology and hygiene ' . Missionary women were motivated i n part b y their perception of the inerior status of women in many Papuan societies. Mrs Beharell of the LMS lamented the plight of the Hula women, ' heathen. without ambition, merely the slave of man ' (Beharell to Thompson, 24 Ianuary 1 9 1 7 ) . Nevertheless the destiny which the missionary wives saw for the women whom they inluenced was a modest one. They were to become capable and godly wives for the men who became part of the Christian community : ' clean and helpful wives for our boys ' . as one wife put it (Rich to Thompson, 4 May 1 902). In the SHM, where priests, brothers and sisters lived and worked in celibate communities, and in the Anglican mission, celibate in ideal though not entirely in practice, there was less emphasis on the nuclear family as the ocus of mission activity. There was not the same degree of role diferentiation in their training of the young, nor the same emphasis on the acquisition of domestic skills. This may have been, particularly in the SHM, because the role of pious wife was less exalted than that of the celibate religious. Roman Catholic sisters provided a diferent role model for Papuan girls from that presented by Protestant wives.

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Nevertheless the concept o f the nuclear family was promoted and supported in all missions. In Protestant and Catholic missions alike, marriages between converts were high points of station life. Nuns, sisters, wives and spinsters all indulged their nostalgia by dressing Papuan brides and decking out churches in close approximations of the traditional European, Christian wedding. Soon after the ounding of the SHM Fr Henri Verjus, its pioneer missionary, established a new village where married converts were to live orderly and godly lives removed rom the ' contaminating ' influences of their natal villages. All missionaries were aware that their morality was in constant conflict with that of the village, their authority in competition with that of parents. The solution for some was the formation of settlements. All mission compounds were, to some extent, settle­ ments, the product of almost inadvertent growth as converts and students were drawn into the station routine. But beyond this there was, on the part of some missionaries, a deliberate policy of attracting children, and sometimes adults, from the ' dirt and ilth and immorality and lamentable ignorance ' of the village and influencing them through ' daily living in a Christian atmosphere ' (Fletcher 1 902 ; Holmes to Thompson, 5 September 1 90 5 ) . The compound, with its one hundred or so inhabitants, was also seen as an object lesson to the heathen environment. Settlements appealed especially to evangelical Protestants. Most remarkable was Charles Abel's Christian settlement at Kwato where children, totally cut of rom the ' heathen habits and ugly practices ' of their home villages, submitted to a rigid discipline, with Abel and his wife ' directing them in the common afairs of their daily life ' (Abel 1 90 3 ) . This island settlement had elements of a theocracy. Abel's missionary neighbours, Charles Rich and Will Saville, were converted to the settlement principle by a visit to Kwato as was Abel's colleague, Percy Schlencker, another ardent evangelical. J. H. Holmes fostered the growth of settlements in the gulf and delta and, in a more modiied form, so did his neighbours Ben Butcher, Edwin Pryce-Jones and Harry Dauncey. But within the ranks of the LMS a sturdy band of individualists - there were also those who totally opposed settlements as ' hot-houses ', destructive in alienating the people rom their culture and unrealistic in the environment which they substituted. W. G. Lawes, R. L. Turner and William Lawrence opposed settlements on these grounds and so in time did Rich, Pryce­ Jones, Butcher and Dauncey. After a 1 9 1 5 London deputation reported negatively on the policy it survived only on a small scale.

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Methodist missionaries pursued a settlement policy similar to that of their LMS neighbours who were fervent proponents of the scheme. The aim, as at Kwato, was ' to get some of the young people entirely under the influence of the Mission ' rather than that of their parents (Lloyd, 1 6 May 1 89 9 ). To win them from heathenism ' a settlement is indispensible ' , declared one Methodist missionary (Fletcher 1 902), and his colleagues echoed his judgement unanimously. The settlement at Dobu comprised a boarding school, an orphanage and a ' reormatory ' for children mandated to Bromilow under a ' Neglected Children's Act ' to save them from ' living in awul sin ' (AMMR 1 8 98 : 10). As the SHM stations developed it became common or priests to have a group of young boys boarding with them. Fr Fastre had a dozen students in his house at Popole, and Fr Dubuy of Ononghe had forty students living under his roof. ' These children are the hope of our district ' , wrote Fr Chabot of Kuni to a benefactor, ' better educated than the others, shielded as far as possible rom the superstitious ways of the country, they will be able to orm Christian households ' (Chabot 1 904 : 401 ). Anglican missionaries, consistent with the Anglo-Catholic orientation of most, saw their stations as ' communities ' rather than settlements, and were generally less committed to weaning their converts away from their own culture ; but the diference was only one of degree. Like their Methodist neighbours they provided homes for orphaned children and also for mixed-race children mandated to the bishop by the government. Where settlements existed they totally disrupted traditional family structures and relationships for those involved. Influence could be exerted from birth, as with the infants whom the indomitable Mrs Bromilow rescued from burial with their dead mothers. Like the two childless wives of the chairmen of the Methodist mission in this period, Lily Bromilow (who had one adopted daughter, Ruve) and Nora Gilmour, the single missionary sisters and the spinsters of the Anglican mission found an outlet for maternal feelings in lavishing afection on these and the other children in the settlements. Control persisted at least until marriage which, in the more theocratic settlements such as Kwato and Dobu, was at times arranged by the missionary in charge. Whether their converts were drawn into a closely supervised and regulated settlement or whether they remained part of the traditional village, all missionaries were committed to a policy of ' raising ' the

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Papuans, a policy which had far-reaching implications for both family life and associated social and cultural practices. Missionaries difered in their understanding of what it meant to ' raise ' the Papuan. All assumed the need to introduce education and medicine ; all agreed to oppose such practices as cannibalism, head-hunting, malign sorcery and infanticide - objectives in which they supported and were supported by government policy. Although each of the four missions proclaimed the intention of retaining all native customs compatible with Christianity, the decision as to what was or was not compatible was a unilateral one. In their choice of what to oppose, what to retain and what to introduce, the missionaries most clearly revealed beliefs and underlying values which were a product of their own origins. Earlier in the century missionaries had debated whether they should irst civilise or Christianise. Samuel Marsden in the Paciic and the Moravian missionaries in Greenland had chosen the former. By the l 8 70s Protestant missionaries were inclined to assume that civilisation without Christianity was meaningless ; that ' a savage in a shirt is no better than one without ' (King l 909 : l 3 9 ). This axiom reflects what the missionaries meant by civilisation. It was associated in their minds with the externals of Western culture, especially the adoption of clothing. Most Protestant missionaries, although sceptical about attempts to civilise before converting, still saw the two as inextricably intertwined. Their goal, as one of them explained, was the ' Christian civilisation of the Papuan people ' (Beharell l 9 l 5 ). Only a small minority expressed any doubts as to the necessity of their civilising role. In their eforts to ' civilise ' the Papuans the Protestant missionaries showed a concern for the minutiae of behaviour which was not so characteristic of their Anglican and Sacred Heart counterparts. While all but a few of the older Protestant missionaries were free of the inhibitions about traditional dress, or the lack of it, associated with their predecessors in the Paciic, they interfered with numerous other aspects of Papuan cultures. Bishop Stone-Wigg of the Anglican mission, when visiting the Methodist head-station of Dobu in 1 90 1 , noted the ' very persistent opposition given by the Mission to many native ways ' (Stone-Wigg, Diary, 1 90 1 : 1 6 1 ). These ' native ways ' included the chewing of tobacco, the marking of the face with black gum, use of ' impure ' language, the observation of traditional funeral rites and the beating of the drum on Saturday nights. Strict Sabbath

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observance was imposed. That other great hallmark of late Victorian Methodism, teetotalism, was less prominent because of efective government enforcement of the regulations prohibiting alcohol to Papuans. In the LMS, which, consistent with its Congregational tradition, was less uniied than the Methodist mission, there was greater diversity of practice. While some of the staf earned the respect of anthropologists or their tolerance and restraint, others adopted prohibitions comparable to those of the Methodist mission. The bitter campaign waged by W. G. Lawes and some of his colleagues against the traditional Motu dance, the mavaru, was the most notable example (Lawes to Blayney, 14 July 1 898). The Sacred Heart Mission adopted, in theory, a position close to that of the Protestants. Archbishop Navarre stated or the beneit of the government that their object in coming was to ' civilise ' as well as ' convert ' (Navarre to Douglas. 4 May 1 8 8 7). But, in practice, for the Sacred Heart missionaries civilising seems to have been a concomitant of conversion rather than an intrinsic part of a two­ pronged objective. Unlike many Protestant missionaries they encouraged traditional dancing until l 908, when a review of mission policy suggested that it was interfering too severely with church attendance. Their attitude towards other aspects of trad­ itional cultures was tolerant and pragmatic. Early denunciations of sorcery gave way to attempts at understanding and some accommo­ dation, and in Mekeo, opposition to mortuary ceremonies was withdrawn when church attendances plummeted (Hau'ofa 1 9 7 5 : 1 7). The link between Christianity and civilisation was most irmly repudiated by the Anglican missionaries. Bishop Stone-Wigg drew on the tradition, exempliied by Bishop Trozer and his successors in the Universities Mission to Central Africa and also endorsed by the Melanesian Mission, of divorcing Christianity rom its Western context and integrating it with village life. Less convinced of the superiority of the European or the degradation of the Papuan. the Anglicans in New Guinea did not want ' a parody of European or Australian civilisation ' (Newton 1 9 14 : 2 5 1 -2). Aware of the limits to their understanding and knowledge of Papuan cultures they remained ' conservative in dealing with native customs ' except those universally condemned. They debated what attitude to adopt towards death easts until 1 92 9 , when they decided they should be opposed. Dancing was encouraged and they considered the possibility of

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combining initiation ceremonies, usually opposed by their Protestant counterparts, with their own ceremony of conirmation. But despite their unanimously expressed policy of minimum interference and their varying degrees of tolerance towards Papuan cultures, there were aspects of traditional social organisation, apart from those also controlled by government regulation, to which all the missionaries remained opposed. Many of these related, not surprisingly, to marriage and sexual mores. Pre-eminent among them, as in all mission ields where it existed, was the issue of polygyny. While recognising that in Papua it was not such a problem as in other places, missionaries, especially those of the SHM, deined it as one of the major challenges conronting them. All four missions allowed polygynists to become ' candidates under Christian instruction ' or, in Anglican terminology, hearers, but within the Sacred Heart, Anglican and Methodist missions no polygynist could become a catechumen until the polygynous union was renounced. This involved the banishment of all but one wife, a practice which may have caused other missionaries the disquiet voiced by Methodist Andrew Ballantyne : ' It seems too hard to put wives and families away ... If we could allow these old marriages to stand, much possible hardship might be avoided ' (AMMR April l 9 1 2 : l 6 ). In the LMS, early workers followed the compassionate lead of James Chalmers in rejecting this requirement. The same flexibility was apparent in Holmes ' conviction that, under existing circumstances, polygyny was a ' necessity ' in Namau (Holmes, Diary, 1 8 99). However, while pre-existing polygynous unions were accepted in the LMS, it was expected that Christian converts would abstain rom such marriages after baptism. While Roman Catholics, Anglicans and Methodists all debarred polygynists rom church membership, the intensity of their general opposition to polygyny varied. The attitude of Anglican missionaries seems to have been fairly relaxed. Copland King wrote, in retrospect, ' Polygamy itself did not ... concern us much, although we stopped it when we could ' ( 1 899 : 26). Methodists were more unyielding, opposing it rom the early days when Samuel Fellows ' bashed polygamy ' with vigour (Diary, 1 89 1 ). Benjamin Danks assured the uneasy Ballantyne that opposition was ' the shortest way to a reform that is absolutely necessary ' (Danks to Ballantyne, l February l 9 l 2 ). In the SHM opposition was even more thoroughgoing, Archbishop Navarre threatening polygynists with the ires of hell (Navarre to

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Douglas, 4 May 1 8 8 7). Pitt-Rivers, admittedly not an impartial witness, alleged three instances in which interference in traditional polygynous marriages extended to abduction by priest, teacher or convert, of second wives, and their subsequent remarriage to Christians ( 1 92 7 : 1 3 8). Lieutenant-Governor Sir Hubert Murray admitted knowledge of one of these cases (Murray 1 9 30). After the introduction of Archbishop de Boismenu's programme of re­ vitalisation in l 908, opposition to polygyny intensiied. Christians who had lapsed into polygyny were expelled from the church, a policy that was revoked in l 9 2 9 with the realisation that the ' road to repentance ' was thus cut of (Dupeyrat l 9 34 : 3 70 ). Archbishop de Biosmenu told the Royal Commission of 1 906 (Commonwealth of Australia 1 90 7) that the government should discourage polygyny as had Sir William MacGregor. When the Marriage Ordinance was passed in 1 9 1 2, the SHM, while generally approving it, regretted that by recognising all native marriages as legal the government thereby ' protected ' polygyny (Dupeyrat l 9 34 : 3 70 ). On the general issue of sexual mores there was more consensus. All missionaries opposed ' licentiousness ' in any form, their main concerns being · fornication ' and adultery. In their opposition to the latter they were joined by the government, who made adultery among the Papuans a crime punishable by six months ' im­ prisonment. Their attitude towards sexual morality led the mission­ aries to appose a number of traditional customs and ceremonies. Chalmers energetically attacked the Kiwai moguru, which he described as ' abominably ilthy ', believing, probably incorrectly. that it included ritualised sodomy. Butcher opposed a similar ceremony, the buguru of the delta region (Chalmers to Thompson, 3 1 May 1 89 3 ; Butcher 1 96 3 , l 8 1 f.). After some hesitation the Anglican missionaries decided that they must oppose numagwaru, the custom of sleeping together without sexual intercourse (Newton to Stone­ Wigg, 6 January 1 902). But opposition was not always, as their opponents liked to think, based solely on a negative and repressive attitude to sexuality. Butcher's anxiety about the promiscuity associated with the buguru was prompted by his observation of the ravages of venereal disease amongst participants (Butcher 1 9 6 3 : l 86 ). Much of the missionaries' opposition to polygyny was based on their conviction that it exploited women, turning them into ' concubines ' or ' slaves ' (e.g., Navarre to Douglas, 4 May 1 8 8 7 ; Holmes, Diary, 1 8 9 7).

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All missionaries then shared the assumption that some change in the lives of their converts must accompany the profession of Christian belief. There was a wide area of consensus as to the nature of that change in domestic relations as in other areas. But beyond this basic agreement there were, as has been shown, diferent expectations and varying intensities of expectation among and within the four mission bodies. Several factors help explain this diversity. Time and place are obvious variables. Missionaries of 1 9 1 4 came from a diferent world to those of l 8 74. Within those forty years attitudes had shifted considerably, and in particular the exposure of some missionaries to the new discipline of anthropology had moderated some of the ethnocentric assumptions manifested by the pioneer missionaries. Burridge has hypothesised, moreover ( l 9 7 3 : 205), that missionaries from southern and Mediterranean Europe where ' diverse cultural forms and moralities exist in some profusion ' were prepared to allow greater variety of cultural expression than the more mono-cultural countries of northern Europe. This may have been a factor in the tolerance of the French and Italian priests in contrast with, for example, the predominantly British LMS missionaries. The socioeconomic background of the missionaries doubtless also moulded their outlook. Mostly lower middle class or artisan, the Protestant missionaries in Papua reflected the mores of that section of society in their assumptions about family life - in their pre­ occupation with dress, decent language and sabbatarianism and in their condemnation of secular pleasures like dancing and feasting. In contrast the priests of the Sacred Heart and Anglican missiom, often well-educated members of the upper middle class, exhibited on most issues, other than sexual licence, a greater broad-mindedness, flexibility and tolerance which were very likely derived in part from their education and experience. Greater acceptance of traditional cultural practices on the part of Catholic missionaries was closely tied to their Natural Theology which held that, while sin had brought about a certain perversion of human nature, by his surviving powers of reason man could comprehend God through the reality of creation. A partial manifestation of God could be sought and found in all cultures, and thus a greater measure of accommodation and assimilation allowed. Polygyny was opposed however because, ollowing the judgement of

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Pope Leo XIII in Anconum ( 1 880), it was seen as contrary to the secondary precepts of Natural Law. By contrast Protestant mission­ aries, influenced by the Reformation doctrine of total corruption, which rejected the competence of fallen human reason to engage in Natural Theology, saw a greater need for a total break with heathenism. Difering conceptions of the church also influenced the nature and degree of change required by the missionaries. For both Roman Catholics and Anglo-Catholics, the church was a divinely-ordained institution which had, or centuries, embraced all manner of people. Its preservation, insofar as it rested on human endeavour at all, depended upon the idelity of its clergy, not upon its members. From the convert was expected assent to a formal theology and a faithful observation of the sacraments. The evangelical Protestant's under­ standing was totally diferent. For him the church was not an institution which derived its strength from divine ordination and historical continuity. It was the body of believers. With a lower view of the sacraments and the ministry and a less formal theology, the Protestant church deined itself in terms of its members. Hence it was impelled to a much greater concern for the ethics and morality of each individual convert. Moreover, unlike the Roman Catholic and Anglican missionaries who were encouraged to think of their service as that of a lifetime, and that of their successors as lasting for centuries, Protestant missionaries envisaged shorter careers and an independent church. This may have lent a greater urgency to their attempted reforms.

5 M E D IC A L C AR E A N D G E N D ER I N PAPUA NEW G U INEA

DONALD DENOON

A central element of missionary work throughout the world has been medical service. Medical missionaries in Papua New Guinea, from the 1 8 90s until the 1 9 70s, influenced the health of the people who responded to them : that work also embodied powerful ideas about the proper regulation of gender relationships in a colonial situation. The colonial experience of Papua New Guinea was in many respects atypical ; nevertheless the activities and ideas projected by missionaries in that country raise issues which may be pursued in other parts of the ex-colonial world. This chapter begins by describing four eras of medical strategy adopted by colonial oicers in Papua New Guinea and the complementary roles played by mission medical workers. Through­ out the past hundred years government medical oicers were mainly concerned with the well-being of men, and delegated the care of women and children to mission workers. I will then consider the • peculiar problems ' of women, and the manner in which govern­ ments and missions responded to them. Abandoning comortable empiricism in the concluding section, I shall discuss some ideas which motivated the medical workers and speculate on Melanesian readings of the inormation embodied by medical missionaries and their programmes. Europeans took control over New Guinea and Papua very late. tentatively and nervously : the islands' unhealthy reputation was already established. German doctors (in New Guinea after 1 8 84) and their British counterparts (in Papua from the same date) were most concerned about their own survival. Few were attracted and mainly • elderly hacks ' remained (Lambert I 942 ). Their brief was to minister 95

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to the small expatriate enclaves, and then to work towards a healthy labour force for the plantations and mines of the colonial economy. Their weapons were scarce : quinine was one of the few efective drugs, and quarantine and segregation seemed sensible when most infections were incurable. After a ew years, however, they began to take the ofensive against those infections which happened to be treatable - venereal diseases from the l 9oos and yaws and hook­ worm rom the l 9 1 os, according to the Annual Reports of the two dependencies. These treatments did not keep pace with the new health hazards introduced by colonialism. The precarious well-being of Melanesians had, in efect, been protected by their isolation rom the outside world and by the isolation of each small community from its neighbours (Maddocks 1 9 7 5 ) . New social organisation gradually eroded this isolation : plantation barracks, tented camps on mining ields and even the school rooms and churches of the mission stations became foci for the dissemination of tuberculosis, dysentery and respiratory infections (Bell 1 9 73 ; Wigley 1 9 88). Scragg describes the years to l 942 as the ' epidemic era ', when high fertility rates were matched by high (though fluctuating) rates of morbidity and mortality (Scragg 1 98 3 ). Doctors thought of themselves as practising tropical medicine, which meant that they pursued a narrow range of tropical infections rather than pioneering the public health measures (clean water, reliable sewage and pure food) which were transforming the quality of lie in temperate western Europe (Worboys 1 9 76). Government personnel were mainly doctors or doctor-substitutes. The European Medical Assistants - liklik dokta - practised as if they were doctors, and Melanesian orderlies who stafed the hospitals were not trained in nursing. Women were never appointed as doctors, even in one case where a woman was the only applicant and was deemed suitable but for her gender.1 Women were employed by the colonial state only as nurses in European hospitals where they would not tend black patients. The ethos of health work in New Guinea - and to a lesser extent in poorer Papua - was determined by military ideas : ex-servicemen were preferred in all government positions between the wars. and Dr Raphael Cilento made explicit use of this shared experience : ' CRS, series A 1 9 28, 7 1 0/20, correspondence concerning recruitment of nurses : and series G 8 5 2/ 1 /4. part �. Director-General Cumpston to Prime Minister's Secretary. 27 April 1 9 39, and again 4 July 1 940.

MEDICAL CARE AND GENDER I N PAPUA NEW GUINEA

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The conditions i n a native country are closely akin to those that must obtain during a military campaign [except that] the medical sanitary oicer in New Guinea is dealing with irresponsible natives. (Cilento 1 9 2 5 : 9 5 ) the correct attitude ... towards the natives ... [is] 1 . Maintain a quiet manner and never lose temper. 2. Be insistent as to obedience in all details. Never pass over a neglect of duty, however small. 3. Maintain reserve with natives. Do not chat with them about matters outside work. Never joke with them. 4. Be as considerate as possible, but never weak. 5. Never forget a promise nor make one which you may not be able to keep. (Cilento 1 9 2 5 : 1 68 )

Government health workers were men, and they catered mainly to men, since men made up the great bulk of the formal workforce. Wage labourers were medically inspected at the beginning and end of their contracts. Villagers encountered the medical arm of the state only when a medical patrol passed through seeking out venereal cases (for isolation) . collecting stool samples for hookworm studies and (almost miraculously, it seemed) healing yaws with a single arsenic injection. The highly mobile medical workers swept swiftly across the surface of rural life. The medical oicers of the colonial states were slow to turn their attention to issues of maternal and child health. although the constant preoccupation with perceived depopulation might have given this a higher priority. New Guinea attempted a maternal and child health (MCH) programme in the 1 9 30s, but failed to recruit nurses who could communicate with New Guinea women and turned the programme over to the Methodist mission (Kettle 1 9 79). In Papua, Dr Strong, the Chief Medical Oicer, raised the question in 1 9 30 (after a quarter of a century in the country) . He judged that this work could not possibly be attempted by government oicers : The ordinary trained Nurse has to earn her living and would expect a high salary. Unless of the missionary type she would hardly be content to settle down for life to work for natives.

The work must therefore be done by mission workers. Even then : to make the expenditure justiiable, I think she must train up native girls to do similar work to herself on their own. in districts other than her own. We

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cannot aford to subsidise a European Nurse, even if working on a Mission salary, or every Mission Station and every fair-sized village.

The scope of the service should be mainly inant welare : Perhaps such nurses could help in the matter of teaching the population how to treat the expectant mother, and to improve the native method of conducting labour. But I would deprecate any attempt to bring such cases into Hospitals or to seriously interfere with native methods without carefully counting the cost. 2

Six months later Lieutenant-Governor Murray revealed with some embarrassment that Catholic missions had been conducting mater­ nal and child health work for many years : in a quarter of a century he had never had occasion to ask whether Papuan women and children were treated at all, or to wonder what the Catholic nuns did with their time. What the missions were doing was, in efect, to complement the government health services. The government service was male, doctor-centred, mobile, serving mainly the men in the ormal workforce. By the nature of their evangelising work missionaries were immobile, learning a language and seeking the conidence of a particular community. Missions employed nurses more commonly than doctors, and sometimes tried to train women converts or a nursing career. At Kwato Mission in Milne Bay, the Abel family built a hospital within sight of the government native hospital at Samarai. Kwato hospital refleGted the Abel amily's horror of the rough orderlies who stafed Samarai hospital and terrorised its women patients. The Abels brought Dr Berkeley Vaughan to Kwato hospital (Vaughan 1 9 74), but more often they employed Australian nurses to teach Papuan women. The social ideal - to which many Papuan women conformed - was to train as a nurse, marry the manager of one of the mission plantation complexes, and become part of a productive and therapeutic team (Denoon 1 9 89). A much higher proportion of the missionary population was female than was true of the government service (see Chapter 4 of this volume). If only or their own survival. missionaries were often given an elementary training in medicine and were sometimes willing to share that knowledge with their converts. One of these encounters tell us much of what is otherwise unrecorded. Mr and Mrs Deasey 2

CRS series A 5 1 8, item N 840/ 1 / 5 , Lieutenant-Govenor Murray to Prime Minister, 6 September 1 9 30, enclosing memorandum by Walter Mersh Strong, 16 July 1 9 30. Again, Murray to Minister, 5 January 1 9 3 ! .

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were sent by the Unevangelised Fields Mission to a remote and watery mission in the Gulf of Papua in the 1 9 30s (MHR tapes 2 2 , 2 3 ). Mrs Deasey formed the impression that Papuan childbirth was an intensely dangerous afair. Before she produced her irst child a mother received advice, including advice from men, on what was about to occur. To hasten the delivery, she carried heavy loads. At the onset of labour she took herself to a hut on her husband's ground carrying some ginger, sugar-cane, a sliver of bamboo, string, sago and a coconut. Her close kin ollowed her, at a cautious distance. If labour was prolonged they would assist by beating her on the back with a stick to waken the baby. Otherwise she delivered the child alone, buried the placenta and carried the baby home. Mrs Deasey was not allowed to attend a birth but she managed to break the taboo in the case of the wife of her house-boy. The baby was within the usual range of weight for the community - three to our pounds - and born in the usual weather - rain. When the baby thrived, despite the presence of a man in the house, the event provoked a trickle and then a flood of women seeking assistance at birthing. The episode contains several themes common to the early missionary encounters : the absence of a midwifery tradition, procedures likely to result in devastating maternal and child mortality rates, an impulsive intervention by a woman with little pertinent training, and an eager response. For Mrs Deasey and for many other missionary women, the traditions of childbirth were more honoured in the breach. In Scragg's periodisation (Scragg I 98 3 ) this early • epidemic era ' in which population remained more or less stable was followed by the Paciic War, when many populations actually declined. The post­ war years - Scragg' s • curative era ' - saw the development of welare colonialism, including an immensely expanded Public Health Department armed with new magic bullets (penicillin and sulpha drugs mainly) which took the ofensive in great campaigns against malaria, tuberculosis, leprosy, yaws and other killing diseases. In almost every respect the post-war department transcended the limits accepted by its pre-war predecessors. It is perhaps unfair to concentrate on one kind of unortunate continuity when so much else changed, but in this context the continuity is the most important eature. For the irst time the colonial administration appointed a woman doctor, Joan Refshauge (Refshauge n.d.). The Secretary of the

1 00

FAMILY AND GENDER I N THE PACIF IC

Department of Territories in Canberra insisted that she irst retrain in obstetrics and gynaecology, in the belief that a white woman treating black men would jeopardise the colonial order and civilisation as he knew it. As soon as there were suicient doctors in the country to allow for specialisation, Joan Refshauge and the only other woman doctor in the department were hived of to create the Queen Elizabeth II Division of Infant, Child and Maternal Health. The signiicance of this development in the overall strategy of the colonial power is revealed in Administrator J. K. Murray's report to his Minister in 1 949 : The Maternal and Infant Welfare side needs to be given increased attention, not only because of the usual humanitarian considerations. but because the increase in the native population in the Territory is almost certainly a condition of survival ... and is a condition of security so far as ... Australia is concerned. Many more women medical practitioners are required in order that contact with the native women shall be fully welcomed and efective. 3

The Division developed, in efect, as the women's auxiliary to an essentially male department. By 1 9 5 3 there was an establishment of two doctors, six white sisters, one Papuan assistant-midwife and thirty-one trainees - all female. On out-stations, clinics were con­ ducted by the wives of European Medical Assistants and other administration oicers. 4 The unit was still an expression of the old idea of having women address the ' peculiar problems ' of other women. Most MCH work was, however, delivered by mission staf, as Table 5 . 1 shows. In terms of health the government's concern for women was long overdue. Every demographic observation during the past hundred years has commented on the masculinity of the population : more boys than girls are born in every cohort, and in every cohort the boys are more likely to survive to adulthood and old age (Lea and Lewis 1 9 76 : 6 5f. ). The reasons for this disparity can only be suggested, but the suggestions are arresting. Some Melanesian societies certainly practised selective infanticide (ibid), not on a massive scale. and in any case this would scarcely explain the consistency of the demographic pattern from one part of the country to another. Hide observes, in a small sample, that women eat diferent oods, gain less 3

4

CRS series A S I 8 , item R 8 3 2 / r/6. j. K. Murray to Minister. 24 September. Refshauge Papers. draft Annual Reports for 1 9 5 2 / 5 3 and 1 9 5 3 / 54.

MEDICAL CARE AND GENDER I N PAPUA NEW GUINEA

IOI

Table 5 . I Papua New Guinea MCH attendances for selected years (attendances in thousands) Pre-natal clinics

1 9 58/59 1 960/61 1 962/63 1 964/65

Child welfare clinics

Department

Mission

Department

Mission

"h 1 6· 3 24· 5 3 1 ·2

41·1 50·9 63·1 7