Slavers in Paradise

266 Pages·1981·18.105 MB·English

by  H.E. Maude

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Main Routes Gomez (2); Urmeneta y Ramos; Barbara 10 Guillermo: from Rapa. Notes
Gomez (repatriation voyage). 11 lose Castro: from Rapa.
1 Northern Route from Callao to or through
Southern route from Easter Island to Rapa, 12 Rosa Patricia: from Rapa. 1 Routes within island groups are not shown
the Marquesas and Northern Cook Groups,
taken by Cora (via Mangareva); Guillermo; 13 Rosa y Carmen: from Rapa. but are detailed in Table 2.
taken by Adelante (1|; Jorge Zahaza;
Jost Castro; Rosa Patricia; Rosa y Carmen 14 Micaela Miranda: from Rapa. 2 Voyages (route numbers) in an easterly
Manualita Costas; Trujillo; Apuiimac;
(via Mangareva); Micaela Miranda; Misti; 15 Ellen Elizabeth: from Tongareva. direction are underlined.
Eliza Mason; Adelante (2); Genara;
Barbara Gomez (repatriation voyage). 16 Dolores Carolina; Polinesia; Honorio; from 3 The return route is only shown to the last
Empresa; Dolores Carolina; Polinesia;
Adelante (3); General Prim (2|; Diamant Other Routes Pukapuka. island visited, from which ships are
17 La Concepcion. presumed to have made direct to Callao,
(repatriation voyage). 4 Serpiente Marina: from Easter Island.
18 Guay as. except the Adelante (1) and Empresa,
2 Easter Island route from Callao, taken by 5 Trujillo: from Manihiki.
19 Misti. which went initially to Huacho, and the
Serpiente Marina; Bella Margarita; Teresa; 6 Eliza Mason: from Fatuhiva.
20 Whaler Grecian. Ellen Elizabeth, which made for
General Prim (1); Cora; Carolina (1); 7 Mercedes A. de Wholey; Barbara
21 Adelante (repatriation voyage). Lambayeque.
Guillermo; Hermosa Dolores; Jost Castro; Gomez (1).
22 Ellen Elizabeth (repatriation voyage). 4 The route of the Australian whaler Grecian
Rosa Patricia; Rosa y Carmen; Micaela 8 Empresa: from Fatuhiva.
23 Adelante: from Tongareva. is shown thus:..........
Miranda; Rosalia; Carolina (2); Barbara 9 Cora: from Rapa.
This book was published by ANU Press between 1965–1991.
This republication is part of the digitisation project being carried
out by Scholarly Information Services/Library and ANU Press.
This project aims to make past scholarly works published
by The Australian National University available to
a global audience under its open-access policy.
Slavers in Paradise
1 Hehe a Afora of Fakaofo: the last surviving slave (photographed
in 1921). BM.
To the
Islanders of Polynesia,
who asked for this book,
and to
Professor J.D. Freeman,
H.E. Maude
Australian National University Press
Canberra
1981
Published in the Pacific Islands by
The University of the South Pacific
Suva, Fiji
©H.E. Maude
First published 1981
This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing
for the purpose of private study, research,
criticism, or review, as permitted under the
Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any
process without written permission. Inquiries
should be made to the publishers.
National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication entry
Maude, H.E. (Henry Evans), 1906-
Slavers in Paradise
Bibliography.
Includes index.
Simultaneously published: Stanford, Calif.
Stanford University Press.
ISBN 0 7081 1607 8.
ISBN 0 7081 1608 6 (pbk.).
1. Alien labor, Polynesian—Peru—History
2. Contract labor—Peru. 3. Labor and
laboring classes—Polynesia—History. I. Title.
331.6'2'96085
To the
Islanders of Polynesia,
who asked for this book,
and to
Professor J.D. Freeman,
whose generous help
ensured its production
PREFACE
During World War II, when working for the now defunct Western
Pacific High Commission, it was my good fortune to visit twenty-
seven of the Central and Eastern Pacific Islands mentioned in this
work. It was a remote and isolated world hard to visualise in these hur­
ried times: a world of cloud-capped volcanic islands and ethereal coral
atolls—all seemingly asleep, for normal shipping services had long
ceased and commercial flying was still a dream of the future.
Only the inter-island schooners still plied their erratic routes at
unpredictable times; and fortunately for me it was possible to reach
their orbits from my headquarters at Suva by boarding an American
Army plane which operated a fortnightly 'milk run' from Pearl Har­
bour via Palmyra, Christmas Island, Borabora and Aitutaki to Pago
Pago.
From lovely Aitutaki I was able to sail by schooner through the
Southern Cooks and Australs to Pitcairn and then up via the Gambiers
and Tuamotus to Tahiti; and from thence through the Line Islands and
Northern Cooks, to be picked up again from a palm-girdled lagoon not
far from Suwarrow by a New Zealand Air Force plane, and taken to
Samoa.
It was during this wandering and rather euphoric period that I came
to know the Polynesian islanders, and particularly the atoll dwellers,
as I have never been privileged to before or since. I suppose that many
of the atolls with their mellifluous names—Manihiki, Rakahanga,
Pukapuka, Tongareva—were as little visited then as during the time of
the Peruvian raids, while the leisurely way of life on them had hardly
changed in the eighty years that had elapsed.
At all events it was at this time that I was asked to tell the story of
what had happened to their great-grandparents and great great-grand­
parents who had left, duped or forced, in the holds of the barques and
brigs that came sailing from the east. To this day no one has told them
what had occurred: neither government, nor missionary, nor his­
torian; all the secondary material in print is a few colourful episodes
apparently culled from the pages of the Sydney Morning Herald, some
sporadic notices in works on individual islands or groups and the
excellent but all too brief story of Taole, the Niuean who escaped.
Now I know why, for though I started collecting the primary
sources, from which alone a connected narrative could be written, as
long ago as 1958, the material—in English, Spanish and French—
proved to be so unexpectedly abundant and yet so scattered and diffi-
viii PREFACE
cult of access that it has taken twenty years to complete the task,
admittedly as an intermittent labour of love. Perhaps appropriately it
is destined to appear on the fiftieth anniversary of the year in which
my wife and I landed on our first Pacific atoll.
If the Polynesian people to whom this study is dedicated have a
special and personal interest in the narrative it is hoped that at the
same time it may serve to fill a long-felt gap in our knowledge of both
Pacific and Latin American history, linking for a brief period the
fortunes and misfortunes of two utterly dissimilar societies.
For the majority of readers, however, it will be read simply as a
contribution to island literature: as the story of the most dramatic
region-wide conflict between human greed and bewildered innocence
ever to occur in the romantic setting of the South Seas.
FEE. Maude
Canberra, Australia
1 July 1980