Tongareva

ETHNONYM: Penrhyn Islanders

Orientation

Identification. In 1853, the brig Chatham ran aground on a reef off the southwest coast of Tongareva (Penrhyn Island), marooning fourteen crew members and passengers, some for more than a year. This event heralded dramatic and traumatic changes in the island's demography and culture, and it marks what commonly is considered the contact era. Its single virtue was the account of atoll life written by one of the castaways, E. H. Lamont, that quite properly has been described as "one of the best narratives of first-hand contact with a group of Polynesian people before they were influenced by Western culture" and forms the basis of the contact-era ethnography that follows.

Location. Tongareva, lying at 8°59′45" S and 157°58′50" W, is a rhomboid-shaped atoll of more than 100 islets, with a total land area of 9.73 square kilometers. Annual rainfall is 195.5 centimeters. The atoll is subjected to occasional droughts and hurricanes, often with disastrous effects on subsistence.

Demography. Tongareva's contact-era population was Between 1,500 and 2,500, giving a contact-era population density somewhere between about 150 and 250 persons per square kilometer, one of the highest on any atoll in the Pacific. One early visitor commented that the population appeared "so numerous, in proportion to the island, that I cannot, even now, think how so many can find subsistence."

Linguistic Affiliation. Beyond the fact that Tongarevan is a Nuclear Polynesian language, a lack of data coupled with several idiosyncratic linguistic features leave its precise affiliation unclear.

History and Cultural Relations

A tentative prehistory of Tongareva suggests that the atoll was first settled in the thirteenth century or earlier, possibly from Samoa, with later arrivals from Aitutaki and Tahiti (via Rakahanga). Later still, there seems to have been contact with the Line Islands. The first recorded European sighting of the island occurred in 1788, and during the next sixty years traders, whalers, and explorers made at least nine further Contacts. Prior to the wreck of the Chatham in 1853, however, the islanders' (mistaken) reputation as cannibals kept these foreign contacts to a matter of hours. Sadly, within a decade of the Chatham's demise, introduced diseases, labor migration, and the depredations of Peruvian slave ships had reduced the population to about a third of its contact-era level.

Settlements

With the exception of some small unpopulated cays, a few depopulated islets in the northeast, and several strips of unclaimed land, the population in 1853 was distributed fairly evenly around the atoll. In times of peace, family-based settlements of a few houses, sometimes set around a plaza or public place, were dispersed across the land, a pattern that may have developed to protect the food supply from raiders. When war threatened, however, the islanders commonly clustered their houses into villages for mutual protection and rapid mobilization against enemy attacks. There were at least two styles of housing. The most common kind of house was about 2 meters wide, 2.5 meters long, and 1.8 meters high; it featured a roof of plaited coconut fronds with the eaves resting on the ground and the front and back enclosed by more plaited fronds. On some islets, though, there were also larger houses, probably belonging to people of eminence. These dwellings were about 3 or 4 meters square and 1.8 meters at the ridge-pole, with their eaves supported on 30-centimeter stakes. Although they had no walls beneath the eaves, matting often was used against the wind. Houses of both types commonly rested on rectangular stone floors, strewn with coral gravel and curbed with thin slabs of coral that jutted 10-30 centimeters above the ground. Pandanus-leaf mats sometimes covered the floors.

Economy.

Subsistence and Commercial Activities. The coconut—its flesh, fluid, embryo, certain types of husk, and (in famine) bud—was the staple of Tongarevan existence. In the absence of domesticated animals and all but a few game animals, marine resources were the principal source of protein. Reef fish were the most favored, but shellfish, flying fish, porpoises, and sharks also were taken. Dietary supplements included the aerial root tips and soft inner kernels of the pandanus.

Industrial Arts. The islanders manufactured baskets, cooking and eating utensils, backrests, sitting and sleeping mats, loincloths and skirts, canoes (including large war canoes), shell axes, nets, fishing lines, hooks, spears, and clubs.

Trade. There was no trade to speak of, either within the atoll or beyond it.

Division of Labor. There was some division of labor by age and sex. Young men and boys gathered and husked coconuts. Both men and women participated in fishing, but only men went turtling and deep-sea diving. While these folk were away at their daily tasks, children and old women remained at home, watching for raids on the coconut supply. At home, women did most of the portering and cooking, though men lit the fires, cooked turtles, and sometimes scraped coconuts. Women plaited mats, while men made canoes and weaponry. Both men and women participated in battle, though women—whose main task was deflecting and breaking incoming spears—were seldom deliberately harmed. Women seem to have done much of the child rearing.

Land Tenure. Palms and land were vested in individuals rather than groups, and, perhaps because of the atoll's Population density, they were highly valued and a major source of conflict. The ocean and lagoon apparently were common property resources, though reefs, shellfish grounds, and other submarine beds were exploited only by adjacent inhabitants.

Kinship

Kin Groups and Descent. The principal kin group and basic economic and residential unit was a first-order ramage known as the haanau, a patrilineal extended family of up to four generations of agnates. The chief's haanau into which Lamont was adopted comprised about fifteen people and occupied a single settlement of three sleeping houses and a common cook house. Recruitment to the haanau was by birth or adoption, the latter being a very common practice, possibly a consequence of the extreme resource pressure. Sets of haanau tracing descent from a common ancestor and inhabiting part or all of an islet were united into a second-order ramage that may have been called the huaanga.

Kinship Terminology. The Tongarevan kin terminology was used for reference rather than address. Like other Polynesian societies, it was Hawaiian, but relative seniority was marked between ego and same-sex relatives of his or her generation. It was atypical and Eskimo-like, however, in having additional descriptive terms for "father," "mother," "uncle," "aunt," "nephew," and "niece." With the exception of "husband" and "wife," in-law terms were collaterally extended within a generation.

Marriage and Family

Marriage. Women apparently could be betrothed before puberty and seem commonly to have married in their mid-teens. Husbands were probably older. "Chiefs" excepted, marriage to second cousins and closer was proscribed; beyond these limits, members of the same huaanga were encouraged to marry to maintain its solidarity and limit the fragmentation of its land. Marriage ceremonies varied in elaboration, the more complex involving the bride's seclusion in mats and self-mutilation by relatives; neither dowry nor bride-wealth was paid. Polygyny principally was restricted to "chiefs." Divorce seems to have been quite common, and postmarital Residence was usually virilocal.

Domestic Unit. It is unclear whether the basic domestic unit was the haanau—the patrilineal extended family—or a subsection of it. To judge by the communal cook house in Lamont's settlement, though, it was the haanau.

Inheritance. Land and palms were inherited individually, at the will of the owner, by real and adopted children, nieces, and nephews. At the time of a 1929 study, sons were favored over daughters and elder brothers over younger, but it is unclear if these preferences also were true of the contact era. Spouses might extend usufruct rights to one another. Nothing is known concerning inheritance of movable property.

Socialization. Apart from the fact that many children were adopted or fostered out to consanguineal relatives for greater or lesser periods of time, little is known of Tongarevan socialization.

Sociopolitical Organization

Social Organization. The basic social divisions of Tongareva society were by sex and age. Adult men were the principal authorities within the family, though it appears that women enjoyed considerable autonomy.

Political Organization. The huaanga was the basic Political unit, its members united under an ariki or "chief" and attending the same marne (ritual place); there were about thirteen huaanga in 1853, averaging about 150 members each. The relationships among huaanga were marked by varying degrees of mutual suspicion and hostility, dominance and submission. Groups of four or five adjacent huaanga were united by kinship, realpolitik, or conquest into one of three largely endogamous hititangata, which acted primarily as war confederacies. Occasionally, two hititangata would ally against the third. Normatively, ariki were men chosen by primogeniture in a chiefly line, though sometimes at least succession was the subject of competition and decision by council. Although ariki had some ritual authority—imposing taboos and performing rituals to incorporate strangers, for example—their influence rested largely on control of property and networks of kin and allies. The more powerful among them had others do much of their manual labor; Lamont regarded their long thumbnails as "testimony of their privileged idleness." They acted as spokespersons, managers of communal work, arbitrators in serious disputes, and war officials.

Social Control. Taboos imposed by individuals or ariki on use of property were an important means of social control. In 1929, Peter H. Buck reported the importance also of public opinion, vilification, and beating, and it seems probable that these sanctions were employed in the contact era as well. Disputes and other matters of moment commonly were discussed in open-air councils that might involve a haanau alone, one or two huaanga, or even occasionally a whole hititangata.

Conflict. In 1853, Tongareva was divided by warfare among the three hititangata. This conflict was somewhat atypical, however, since the Chatham castaways fomented several of the engagements. The usual causes of fighting were coconut shortages, political machination, and revenge. At the first sign of trouble, the elderly would take the very young into hiding. Confrontations occurred both on land and sea. Land engagements frequently involved amphibious landings in large war canoes and often were preceded by ceremonial speeches that might result in conciliation; sometimes, However, Tongarevans launched surprise attacks. Engagements seldom turned into blood baths, possibly because—on land at least—warriors usually were separated by their women, who were considered inviolable.

Religion and Expressive Culture

Religious Beliefs. According to oral tradition, the first Tongarevan humans were the autochthons, Atea and his wife Hakahotu. Several generations later, after a brief stay by the settler Taruia, the great chief Mahuta and his wife, Ocura, arrived from the "land beyond the sky" bringing "cocoa-nuts and other plants for the earth, fish for the sea, and birds for the air." There were four principal gods, incarnated in feather, wood, and hair images but otherwise invisible to all but the taura (high priests). Their ritual loci were twenty-nine or so marae scattered around the atoll. Two of the gods gave life and everything necessary to its preservation; another was supplicated to weaken enemies; and the fourth also was malevolent. In addition, the Tongarevans believed in and feared spirits of the dead and the force of taboos.

Religious Practitioners. Although ariki performed certain ritual functions, the principal practitioners were the taura. Invested at, and associated with, specific marae, they acted as mediums for the gods and ancestral spirits, invoking them for assistance in sickness, war, and other troubles. Taura could travel through enemy territory with impunity, and their "spirit houses" were places of refuge; some taura seem to have possessed secular influence to rival that of the more powerful arikis. There may also have been seers.

Ceremonies. Birth was minimally ritualized, but more extensive rites involving genital operations, sexual initiation, and investiture with loincloths or skirts were performed at puberty for both males and females. Marriage ceremonies varied in complexity. There were quite elaborate greeting and welcoming ceremonies, as well as celebratory dances and turtleeating ceremonies. Mortuary rites, however, were the most involved rituals.

Arts. The contact-era record mentions very little material art beyond the images of the gods, minor embellishments of weaponry, black-feather headdresses worn by an undetermined class of men (probably ariki), and necklets of human hair and fingernails. The more common arts seem to have been ephemeral: songs, dances, pageants, and the recitation of legends.

Medicine. Beyond the fact that the gods frequently were implicated, it is unclear to what causes illness was attributed. Bathing was a very common therapy, occasionally attended, according to Lamont, with (unspecified) "superstitious forms." A coconut-based purgative allegedly was the only medicine they knew. Otherwise, most treatment was in the hands of the taura, aided in the case of eminent patients by the images of the gods.

Death and Afterlife. For some time after death, it was believed, the spirit of the deceased might be seen haunting its familiar grounds. After interment of its bones, it then left for a distant realm, then becoming visible only as stars. At death, the body was washed, anointed with coconut oil, and, along with its spouse or another close relative, covered with a mat. After dirges, dances, self-laceration, and rites to exorcise its spirit, the corpse and some of its utensils and tools were sewn in the mat and hung from the roof of a sleeping house under the observance of a chief mourner. If the deceased were eminent, this vigil might last as long as six months; afterwards, the bones were buried and a funeral feast celebrated.

See alsoCook Islands

Bibliography

Bellwood, Peter S. (1978). Archaeological Research in the Cook Islands. Pacific Anthropological Records, no. 27. Honolulu: Bernice P. Biship Museum, Department of Anthropology.

Buck, P. H. (1932). Ethnology of Tongareva. Bernice P. Bishop Museum Bulletin no. 92. Honolulu.

Campbell, Andrew R. T. (1985). Social Relations in Ancient Tongareva. Pacific Anthropological Records, no. 36. Honolulu: Bernice P. Bishop Museum, Department of Anthropology.

Lamont, E. H. (1867). Wild Life among the Pacific Islanders. London: Hurst & Blackett.

Roscoe, Paul B. (1987). "Of Canoes and Castaways: Reassessing the Population of Tongareva (Penrhyn Island) at Contact." Pacific Studies 11:43-61.

PAUL B. ROSCOE