Melville's Flight to Taipi: Topographic, Archeological, and Historical Considerations

Melville's Flight to Taipi: Topographic, Archeological, and Historical Considerations ROBERT C. SUGGS Melville's first book, the fictional narrative Typee (1846),1 has been taken by some readers and scholars to be a geographically and historically accurate account of Nuku Hiva, which Melville visited as a common seaman in 1842. Since we know that he and Tobias Green jumped ship and fled inland to avoid authorities , many readers have assumed that Typee is a truthful autobiographical account of what actually happened. But it is a work of fiction, a realistic-seeming novel more or less in the style of Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719X heightened to appeal to readers of "romance." It is therefore crucial to remember that Melville was a novelist; his writings are a mixture of personal experience, material derived from literary accounts, as well as from hearsay, and plain fantasy. Typee cannot be assumed to be history, ethnology, or an objective travel account. This paper will use historical, ethnographic, and topographic information to disentangle fiction from fact in the tale of Melville's flight to Taipi.2 While I believe that Melville visited Taipi, this paper presents evidence to show not only that he greatly embellished his account of his trip to Taipi with fictional episodes, but that in so doing, he created an alternative version of reality. His account does not accurately describe the situation on Nuku Hiva in 1842 with respect to intertribal relations and warfare, the intertribal travel and communications network and practices, or the policies of the French occupaESQ \V.51\ 1ST-3RD QUARTERS \ 2005 47 ROBERT C. SUGGS tion forces. Most significantly, his description of the topography of the Taipi/Taioha'e area is so greatly at variance with the actual topography ofthat region that Melville's account of his wanderings in the hills of Nuku Hiva appears as a virtually complete fantasy, a literary stratagem designed to heighten the reader's suspense. Ill SOURCES In preparing this paper, I have drawn primarily upon two groups of sources that provide a significant amount of information about the situation in Taioha'e and Taipi in the early nineteenth century and specifically in 184?; I. Results of my own archeological and ethnological research on Nuku Hiva from 1956 to 1958 and from 1993 to the present. This research was focused in the Taioha'e/Taipi Hatiheu/Ha'atuatua area and included excavations on the site inhabited by Melville, as well as prolonged residence with the family of Heiku'a Clark of Taipivai, who was a direct descendant of Peue (said to be Melville's "Fayaway").3 2- Accounts of nineteenth-century visitors to Taioha'e and Taipi, especially that of Max Radiguet (1842—1857)>4 the secretary to French admiral Du Petit Thouars during the French occupation of the Marquesas. Radiguet was present at the time Melville arrived in Taioha'e. Other sources include the accounts of Edward Robarts (1797—1806), David Porter (1813), and Charles Stewart (1829).5 Ill MELVILLE'S RELIABILITY As with all works of fiction, none of Melville's statements can be accepted unquestionably as absolute fact. Historical research has shown that many of the statements made in Typee are false, beginning with things as simple as ship names and Melville's often-repeated claim to have remained in Taipi for "more than four months " (Typee, 245) when he in fact stayed about four weeks. His Marquesan vocabulary includes many 48 MELVILLE'S FUGHT TO TAIPI non-Marquesan or nonsense words; his place names and tribal names are also often erroneous. Brief passages or paraphrases of passages from other sources (Porter and Stewart, for example ) appear in Typee, showing that he drew from a wide range of literary sources, as Charles Anderson thoroughly documented more than sixty years ago.6 It is quite significant that Melville also had access to firsthand information from a family member who had visited the Marquesas long before he did. His cousin, Midshipman Thomas Melville of the USS Vincennes, had been in the Marquesas and had gone ashore in Taipi in 1829·7 His uncle, Captain John D'Wolf, was a close associate of the renowned G. H. F. von Langsdorff, chief scientist...