A Footnote to History by Robert Louis Stevenson
Scanned and proofed by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk





A Footnote to History




PREFACE



AN affair which might be deemed worthy of a note of a few lines in
any general history has been here expanded to the size of a volume
or large pamphlet. The smallness of the scale, and the singularity
of the manners and events and many of the characters, considered,
it is hoped that, in spite of its outlandish subject, the sketch
may find readers. It has been a task of difficulty. Speed was
essential, or it might come too late to be of any service to a
distracted country. Truth, in the midst of conflicting rumours and
in the dearth of printed material, was often hard to ascertain, and
since most of those engaged were of my personal acquaintance, it
was often more than delicate to express. I must certainly have
erred often and much; it is not for want of trouble taken nor of an
impartial temper. And if my plain speaking shall cost me any of
the friends that I still count, I shall be sorry, but I need not be
ashamed.

In one particular the spelling of Samoan words has been altered;
and the characteristic nasal N of the language written throughout
NG instead of G. Thus I put Pango-Pango, instead of Pago-Pago; the
sound being that of soft NG in English, as in SINGER, not as in
FINGER.


R. L. S.
VAILIMA,
UPOLU,
SAMOA.



EIGHT YEARS OF TROUBLE IN SAMOA



CHAPTER I - THE ELEMENTS OF DISCORD: NATIVE



THE story I have to tell is still going on as I write; the
characters are alive and active; it is a piece of contemporary
history in the most exact sense. And yet, for all its actuality
and the part played in it by mails and telegraphs and iron
warships, the ideas and the manners of the native actors date back
before the Roman Empire. They are Christians, church-goers,
singers of hymns at family worship, hardy cricketers; their books
are printed in London by Spottiswoode, Trubner, or the Tract
Society; but in most other points they are the contemporaries of
our tattooed ancestors who drove their chariots on the wrong side
of the Roman wall. We have passed the feudal system; they are not
yet clear of the patriarchal. We are in the thick of the age of
finance; they are in a period of communism. And this makes them
hard to understand.

To us, with our feudal ideas, Samoa has the first appearance of a
land of despotism. An elaborate courtliness marks the race alone
among Polynesians; terms of ceremony fly thick as oaths on board a
ship; commoners my-lord each other when they meet - and urchins as
they play marbles. And for the real noble a whole private dialect
is set apart. The common names for an axe, for blood, for bamboo,
a bamboo knife, a pig, food, entrails, and an oven are taboo in his
presence, as the common names for a bug and for many offices and
members of the body are taboo in the drawing-rooms of English
ladies. Special words are set apart for his leg, his face, his
hair, his belly, his eyelids, his son, his daughter, his wife, his
wife's pregnancy, his wife's adultery, adultery with his wife, his
dwelling, his spear, his comb, his sleep, his dreams, his anger,
the mutual anger of several chiefs, his food, his pleasure in
eating, the food and eating of his pigeons, his ulcers, his cough,
his sickness, his recovery, his death, his being carried on a bier,
the exhumation of his bones, and his skull after death. To address
these demigods is quite a branch of knowledge, and he who goes to
visit a high chief does well to make sure of the competence of his
interpreter. To complete the picture, the same word signifies the
watching of a virgin and the warding of a chief; and the same word
means to cherish a chief and to fondle a favourite child.