An indigenous perspective revisited

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes It was unfortunately not possible to conduct fieldwork in Vanuatu, where oral traditions of the expedition, particularly among descendants of those affected by the rapacious conduct of the Tongan woodcutters, may have survived. For comments on the difficulties involved in gaining a genuinely indigenous perspective of Pacific history, see my essay ‘An indigenous perspective? Inside the mind of Ma'afu’, in Peter Hempenstall and Brij Lal (eds), Pacific Lives, Pacific Places: bursting boundaries in Pacific History (Canberra 2001). George Turner, Eromanga [written 13 Nov. 1885], London Missionary Society (hereinafter LMS), South Seas Personal, Box 1, Folders 7–9, Sydney, Mitchell Library (hereinafter ML). Statement of Tingea [a former matapule to Ma’afu and resident on Vanuabalavu, Fiji], 8 Mar. 1881. ‘Notes [?by C.R. Swayne] ... on early Fijian history and Ma'afu’, in G.K. Roth, Papers, ML. The English naturalist George Bennett, who sailed on board the Sophia, published a detailed account of the expedition: ‘Account of the islands Erromanga and Tanna, New Hebrides Group’, Asiatic Journal, 7 (Jan.–Apr. 1832), 119–31, quoted in Dorothy Shineberg, They came for Sandalwood (Melbourne 1967), 17 I am indebted to Dr Shineberg for this account of the early sandalwood voyages to the New Hebrides. Turner's letter to Thomas has apparently not survived. Thomas referred to it in his reply, written at his station on Tongatapu in 1845: John Thomas to George Turner, 17 Feb. 1845, LMS South Seas Letters, Box 18, ML. Ibid. Thomas to Gen. Secs, Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society (hereinafter WMMS), 8 Jun. 1843, WMMS Tonga In Letters, ML. Thomas, Journal, 21–7 July 1842, ML. Statement of Tingea. John E. Erskine, Journal of a Cruise among the Islands of the Western Pacific (London 1853), 143–4. Thomas to Turner, 17 Feb. 1845, LMS South Seas Letters, Box 18, ML. Thomas, Journal, 27 July 1842, ML. Thomas Williams, Journal, 1 Aug. 1842, ML. Berthold Seemann, Viti; an account of a government mission to the Vitian or Fijian Islands (London 1862), 241–2. Seemann's source appears to have been not information from Ma'afu, but Erskine's published account of the 1853 voyage in the Havannah (see n. 11). George McLean to Archibald Murray, 27 Dec. 1843, LMS South Seas Letters, Box 16, ML. Erskine, Journal of a Cruise, 145, n. 1. McLean to Murray, 27 Dec. 1843, LMS South Seas Letters, Box 16, ML. McLean to Murray, 27 Dec. 1843, LMS South Seas Letters, Box 16, ML. Ibid. Erskine, Journal of a Cruise, 145, n. 1. Erskine, Journal of a Cruise, 145, n. 1. As a consequence of this and other raids by ships' crews in search of sandalwood, the Erromangans developed strategies designed to sabotage sandalwood expeditions before the crews even reached shore. See ‘Second Voyage of the “John Williams” from England’, Samoan Reporter, Sept. 1848, pp. 3–4, Foreign Office 58/65, ML. McLean to Murray, 27 Dec. 1843, LMS South Seas Letters, Box 16, ML. Erskine, Journal of a Cruise, 144–5. See also ‘The New Hebrides, New Caledonia and the Loyalty Islands’, enc. 4 in J.E. Erskine to Admiralty, 10 Oct. 1849, Admiralty 1/5606, PRO Reel 3303. The northern shore of the harbour is formed by the southern coast of Moso island. Erskine, Journal of a Cruise, 326–7. Ibid., 145, n. 1. McLean to Murray, 27 Dec. 1843, LMS South Seas Letters, Box 16, ML. Thomas, Journal, 31 Oct. 1842, ML. Ibid., 3 Nov. 1842. Ibid. Thomas to Samuel Pinder Henry, 17 Nov. 1842, enc. with Thomas to Gen. Secs, WMMS, 8 June 1843, ML. McLean to Murray, 27 Dec. 1843, LMS South Seas Letters, Box 16, ML. Julian Thomas, in his Cannibals and Convicts (London 1886), stated that Ma'afu lit the fire at the cave's entrance (p. 67). Writing more than 40 years after the events, Thomas is likely to have been influenced by Erskine's published account. Ibid., 10 Jan. 1843. Thomas, Journal, 4 Jan. 1843, ML. Ibid., 10 & 16 Jan. 1843

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