"First Contacts" in Polynesia: The Samoan Case (1722-1848); Western Misunderstandings about Sexuality and Divinity (review)

Serge Tcherkézoff is a French anthropologist with considerable field experience in Sāmoa during the 1980s and 1990s. He has written extensively on the islands and, in his new book, he reviews in detail the early historical accounts of sexual contacts between European men and Samoan women in order to understand what actually occurred. His argument is direct and straightforward —much of what we thought we knew about these encounters is wrong.

Tcherkézoff analyzes all of the written cases of Western encounters with Samoan women from 1722 to 1848, distinguishing between what European observers interpreted and concluded about Samoan sexuality, asopposed to what they actually saw and described. Western observers concluded that these encounters with Samoan women reflected a type of barter and sexually permissive behavior. But Tcherkézoff argues that Samo­ans were, in practice, sexually restrictive and that all of the ceremonies and local restrictions described in the original sources that he consulted point to the enforcement of premarital virginity by all families, including those of lower rank. There was therefore a major difference between European conclusions and actual observations that, in turn, contributed to the generalized Western myth of permissive Polynesian sexuality.

From a Samoan perspective, encounters between Samoan women and European men incorporated Europeans into a Samoan cosmological and social universe. Following Marshall Sahlins's discussion of Hawaiian cosmology, Tcherkézoff argues that Polynesians saw Europeans neither as men or gods in the Judeo-Christian sense, but rather as material manifestations of spiritual beings sent by their gods. This Samoan assumption about Europeans determined interaction with them. Encounters involving Samoan women were not based on barter or sexual hospitality but on Samoan understandings about the sacred status of the visitors. And ­theseencounters mirrored the ritual defloration ceremonies of virgins in their marriages to high-ranking chiefs. That is, Europeans were considered sacred, like chiefs, and therefore treated accordingly. Tcherkézoff applies this analysis to a close reading of all encounters from Roggeveen in 1722 through Bougainville and Lapérouse to the observers of the 1840s. He then examines similar encounters in Tahiti and other parts of Polynesia, finding support for his argument across these cultures.

Although Tcherkézoff employs a symbolic approach that he applies to ethnohistorical materials, he is critical of deconstruction and well aware of the pitfalls of the historical reconstruction. He believes that bringing his contemporary ethnographic knowl­edge of Sāmoa to bear on his historical reading of European and Samoan experiences makes his case more convincing. And, for those readers who are interested in this little studied area of Samoan history, "First Contacts" is a very worthwhile and challenging volume.

Nevertheless, there are risks in such an endeavor. Were the thought worlds of Samoans as deeply meaningful, symbolically homogenous, and influential as Tcherkézoff argues? While stressing the symbolic signifi­cance of these encounters, Tcherkézoff seems to place less emphasis on their political and economic dimensions. Yet chiefly marriages and unions were often about alliances and contacts. Samoans favored relationships with outsiders based on their potential for political and economic gain. Moreover, during the early contact period, Samoans were quick to appreciate and take advantage of more prestigious Europeans as opposed to their lower-ranking counterparts. In the later colonial period, there were many types of Europeans in Sāmoa, staying for varying lengths of time, and having various kinds of relationships with Samoan women, as a growing mixed European/Samoan population attested. The written record, as important as it is for an analysis of first contacts, may not reflect the actual diversity of these relationships.

Tcherkézoff concludes that there has been a major misunderstanding of European-Samoan sexual encounters stemming back to first contacts...