Rituals of sacrifice in early post-European contact Tonga and Tahiti

Journal of Pacific History

Volumn 34, Issue 1, 1999, Pages 5-22

  Filihia, Meredith ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ABORIGINE; ART; ARTICLE; CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY; DEATH; EDUCATION; ETHNOLOGY; HISTORY; HUMAN; LEGAL ASPECT; PACIFIC OCEAN; POLYNESIA; PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECT; SOCIAL DOMINANCE; SYMBOLISM; TONGA; UNITED STATES;

ANTHROPOLOGY, CULTURAL; CEREMONIAL BEHAVIOR; DEATH; HAWAII; HIERARCHY, SOCIAL; HISTORY, 17TH CENTURY; HISTORY, 18TH CENTURY; HISTORY, 19TH CENTURY; HUMAN BODY; HUMANS; OCEANIC ANCESTRY GROUP; PACIFIC OCEAN; POLYNESIA; TONGA;

EID: 61249635147     PISSN: 00223344     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/00223349908572888     Document Type: Article

References (69)

1. See e.g. K.R. Howe, Where the Waves Fall: A New South Sea Islands History From First Settlement to Colonial Rule (Honolulu 1984), which groups archipelagos according to the type of leadership exercised in them.
2. See also M. Sahlins, Social Stratification in Polynesia (Seattle 1958)
3. and F.A. Hanson, 'Political change in Tahiti and Samoa: an exercise in experimental anthropology', Ethnology, 12 (1973), 1-13.
4. See e.g. Sahlins, Social Stratification;
5. I. Goldman, Ancient Polynesian Society (Chicago 1970).
6. Human sacrifice was also practised in the Marquesas Islands and Hawai'i, as well as in Fiji. See N. Thomas, Marquesan Societies: Inequality and Political Transformation in Eastern Polynesia (Oxford 1990), 98, 113, 171, 175;
7. P.V. Kirch and M. Sahlins, Anahulu: The Archaeology of History (Chicago 1992), 172-3;
8. S.M. Kamakau, Ka Po'e Kahiko: The People of Old (Honolulu 1964), 8-9, 34;
9. and S.M. Kamakau, The Works of the People of Old: Na Hana a ka Po'e Kahiko (Honolulu 1976), 129-30.
10. A. de Waal Malefijt, Religion and Culture: An Introduction to Anthropology of Religion (Illinois 1989), 209.
11. H. Hubert and M. Mauss, Sacrifice: Its Nature and Functions, cited in ibid., 211-12.
12. M. Weber, The Sociology of Religion, cited ibid., 211.
13. N. Gunson, pers. comm., 13 May 1998.
14. J. Thomas, 'Tongatabu or the Friendly Islands', Canberra, National Library of Australia, Microfilm No M165-M166, p. 285.
15. 'The Haalbos-Montanus Account', in A. Sharp (ed.), The Voyages of Abel Janszoon Tasman (London 1968), 46. See also p. 155 for the account given in Tasman's journal.
16. J. Cook, A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Around the World, I, 222
17. cited in E.W. Gifford, Tongan Society (Honolulu 1929), 320.
18. J.D. Martin, Tonga Islands: William Mariner's Account (Nuku'alofa 1991), 249n.
19. Thomas, 'Tongatabu or the Friendly Islands', 208.
20. Martin, Tonga Islands, 249.
21. See B. Smith, European Vision and the South Pacific (Sydney 1984), 319, for different interpretations of the scene.
22. J. Cook, in J.C. Beaglehole (ed.), The Journals of Captain James Cook on His Voyages of Discovery, III, pt 1 (Cambridge 1968), 200-1.
23. also G. Robertson, The Discovery of Tahiti (NendeIn/Liechtenstein 1967), 160.
24. There were titles that were signified by feather girdles that were related to other gods such as Ta'aroa, e.g. Te Atua Nui e Maru I Te Ra'i, associated with the Tahiti-Puna'auia marae, and Te Ari'i Nui o Tahiti, associated with Farepua marae; the most highly ranked titles by the time European contact commenced were those that could be traced to Opoa, where 'Oro is said to have been born. See T. Henry, Ancient Tahiti (Honolulu 1928), 232, for Tamatoa titleholders as incarnation of 'Oro;
25. Douglas Oliver, Ancient Tahitian Society (Honolulu 1974), 1048;
26. C. Newbury, 'Aspects of cultural change in French Polynesia: the decline of the Ari'i', Journal of the Polynesian Society, 70 (1967), 8, wrote that Tahitians 'measured status basically in terms of descent by the most direct means through ari'i fanau (chiefs by birth) from ancestor deities'.
27. G. Dening, Mr Bligh's Bad Language (Cambridge 1992), 207.
28. D. Oliver in D. Oliver (ed.), Return To Tahiti: Bligh's Second Breadfruit Voyage (Melbourne 1988), 128.
29. W. Bligh, Journal, in D. Oliver (ed.), Return To Tahiti, 92.
30. J. Morrison, The Journal of James Morrison (London 1935), 117.
31. Bligh, Journal, in Oliver, Return to Tahiti, 123.
32. Oliver, Return To Tahiti, 128.
33. Transactions of the London Missionary Society, II (London 1804), 276.
34. Henry, Ancient Tahiti, 197.
35. J. Wilson, A Missionary Voyage to the Southern Pacific Ocean (Graz 1966), 239.
36. E. Bott, Tongan Society at the Time of Captain Cook's Visits (Wellington 1982), 146.
37. Cook, in Beaglehole, The Journals, III, pt 1, 204.
38. See also J. Turnbull, A Voyage Round the World (Philadelphia 1810), 307.
39. Morrison, The Journal, 207.
40. See, e.g., Wilson, A Missionary Voyage, 167-8.
41. Transactions of the London Missionary Society, II, 63.
42. Thomas, however, claimed in his 'Mythology of the Tongans' (Canberra, National Library of Australia, Microfilm M166), p. 272, that 'in case life was prolonged a little yet no second human being was offered, the writer never heard of two persons being sacrificed for any one chief'.
43. M. Rodriguez, 'Daily Narrative kept by the Interpreter Maximo Rodriguez', in B.G. Corney (ed.), The Quest and Occupation of Tahiti by Emissaries of Spain (Cambridge 1967), III, 178.
44. W.H. Goodenough, 'Oceania and the problem of controls in the study of cultural and human evolution', Journal of the Polynesian Society, 66 (1957), 151.
45. P.V. Kirch, The Evolution of the Polynesian Chiefdoms (Cambridge 1984), 13.
46. For more detailed discussion of the development of social stratification in Polynesia, See Sahlins, Social Stratification in Polynesia, ix-xi, 2, passim;
47. Goldman, Ancient Polynesian Society, xvi, 4, 7, passim.
48. Goodenough, 'Oceania and the problem of controls', 151.
49. B. Shore, 'Mana and Tapu', in A. Howard and R. Borofsky (eds), Developments in Polynesian Ethnology (Honolulu 1989), 150, 153.
50. Gifford, Tongan Society, 322.
51. E. Bott, 'Discussions of Tongan Custom with Her Majesty Queen Salote Tupou and the Hon. Ve'chala', Typescript in possession of E. Wood-Ellem, 54, 55.
52. J. Thomas, 'Mythology of the Tongans', 275.
53. N. Gunson, pers. comm., stated that his fieldwork informant, the chief Tau'atevalu of 'Utulau, told him that these sacrifices were offered in connection with failed yam harvests.
54. Although Thomas referred to Hikule'o as Lord Hikule'o, it is now generally accepted that Hikule'o was a female deity.
55. See J. Comaroff and J. Comaroff, 'Introduction', in J. Comaroff and J. Comaroff (eds), Modernity and its Malcontents (Chicago 1993), xv, xviii.
56. See P.V. Kirch, The Evolution of the Polynesian Chiefdoms, 8-12;
57. P. Bellwood, The Polynesians: Prehistory of an Island People (London 1987), 26, 30, 52, 65, 162.
58. R. Girard, Violence and the Sacred (Baltimore 1977), 4.
59. Thomas, 'Mythology of the Tongans', 271.
60. Girard, Violence and the Sacred, 12, 13.
61. Cf. Turnbull, A Voyage Round the World, 306.
62. Transactions of the London Missionary Society, I (London 1804), 3-4.
63. Transactions, I, 92.
64. Oliver, Ancient Tahitian Society, 1255.
65. Transactions, II, 114.
66. Martin, Tonga Islands, 212, 249.
67. Kamakau, Ka Po'e Kahiko, 8.
68. Kamakau, The Works of the People of Old, 130.
69. Transactions, II, 112, 144.