|
|
|
|
 |
|||
|
 |
|
|
      |
 |
|||
| ||||
| ||||
|
Tattoos, Cannibals and Free LoveSamoa stamp request reveals island past of Margaret Mead, sexual freedom, tattoos, and a mellow lifestyle. |
|
||
| ||||
|
|
|
In April of 2000, the United States Postal Service capitulated to an avalanche, or at least a rivulet, of public support for the creation of a stamp with the territory of American Samoa on it. The USPS yanked the stamp from its lineup twice, spurring Samoan Congressman Eni F.H. Faleomavaega to collect and send a petition of some 15,000 signatures to the USPS. He also blithely reminded the organization that it had recently issued stamps lauding "automobile tail fins (1996), comic strips (1995), carousel horses (1995), humming birds (1992), and Australia's bicentennial (1988)," yet was unwilling to bestow this honor to his homeland.[1] Samoans have always been touchy when it comes to popular representation of their homeland. For example, not long ago the Snapple drink company released a beverage they dubbed "Samoan splash". One Samoan author, posting in a public online forum, said We tolerate the comments from [non-Samoans] who think that Samoa is the place where those big, fluffy white dogs come from (i.e., Samoyeds). We grimace, yet hold our tongues, when giggling blond stewardesses announce flights to Pago Pago, pronouncing it Pay-go Pay-go... so when... Snapple had named their latest flavor "Samoan Splash", a glimmer of hope welled up inside my chest -- the pervasive myths of who and what we are would finally be dispelled. At long last America would know of Us, and all because of this Divine Beverage, which must be a Nectar of the Gods since it is named for our ethnic people... the flavor [is] marginal at best.[2] Snapple had flavored the drink with cupuacu, a fruit from distant Brazil in no way connected with Samoa -- this, not surprisingly, irritated the Samoans. The islanders then suffered the further indignity of having the flavor dropped from the line of Snapple products some time later.[3] A Wee Inferiority ComplexThus, the territory was emotionally ill-equipped to lose its stamp. Surely, Samoans reasoned, they were more important than automobile tail fins. The petition to the USPS provided by Congressman Faleomavaega commented, "Our tradition of military service is strong, and our current per capita rate of enlistment in the U.S. military services is as high as any state or territory," and that not having a stamp to commemorate the territory is "a truly astonishing oversight." What is this faraway land? Why does it deserve to share the same space on lickable paper with luminaries like Elvis Presley and Richard Nixon? What is Samoa's claim to fame? We'll tell you. Easy living, tattoos and Margaret Mead.
Annexed by the United States in 1900, Samoa already had a lengthy history of tattoos and sexual practices that disturbed uptight Westerners. However, it took a little while for such things to get noticed. In 1722, the Dutch made a stop there, but decided that these tattoos, which descend from the waist to the ankles, were actually "artfully woven silk tights or knee breeches." Some French in 1768 thought it was paint. It took until 1787 for the expedition of Jan Francoise de la Perouse to discover that they were actually inkings. Unfortunately, La Perouse later decided to hoist an alleged Samoan thief up the mast of his ship by the man's thumbs. This led to what is called the "La Perouse Incident", wherein several of both parties were killed in a fracas. La Perouse later wrote, "I willingly abandoned to others the task of writing the uninteresting history of these barbarous people; a stay of twenty-four hours and the relation of our misfortunes has sufficed to show their atrocious manners."[4] The Locals Go To Finishing SchoolThe London Missionary Society decided these manners needed taming, whether or not they were actually atrocious. To this end, they sent missionaries John Williams and the unfortunately-named Charles ("Chuck") Barff to show the Samoans how one was really supposed to live: uptight, repressed and industrious rather than the indulging in the abhorrent practices of sitting around naked and fishing all day. The duo witnessed abominations to rigid doctrine, otherwise known as fun. As historian Richard Gilson notes, The mission gave top billing to sex and family relations... the abolition of polygamy and, in most cases, divorce: the celebration of monogamous marriages in church; the prohibition of certain customary marriage rights, including the exchange of goods and the public test of virginity; the prevention of political marriages and of marriages between Christians and non-Christians; the prohibition of adultery, fornication and prostitution [the English meanings of these terms are intended]; the prohibition of obscenity in words and action; the imposition of new standards of dress, including 'full coverage' for women.[5] Williams wanted to get polygamy banned, but realized that doing so might irk the chiefs, who practiced it the most. In his own diary, he considered admitting chiefs with extended, happy families, but dismissed "the wild young Chiefs who have so many wild young girls to none of which he is lawfully married".[6] Williams comments of one meeting, "This is the first time I have had the honour of eating with five naked queens. The natives appear to take the greatest pride in exposing their persons... Clothing of every kind appears a burden to them."[7] It rather sounds like he was having a good time (note the use of "honour"), but in the end, must have been beaming when he perceived later success: "Some few Samoans who have embraced Christianity have taken to wear cloth entirely." Dinner But No MovieHowever, the missionaries must not have been too successful in wooing the locals, because at least one report suggests that Williams and his compatriot Barff wound up being eaten by disgruntled would-be converts. While this particular end might be apocryphal, reports of cannibalism pervaded the literature of the day. For example, Abraham Lincoln granted a reward of five hundred dollars to individuals who rescued American sailor Jonathan Whalon from cannibals in the Marquesas in 1864. Wrote one of the rescuers, "When I saw one of your countrymen, a citizen of your great nation, ill-treated, and about to be baked and eaten, I ran to save him, full of pity and grief at the evil deed of those benighted people."[8] Whalon had gone ashore to trade on the orders of his captain, and, as Turner puts it, ...had heard stories about Marquesan hospitality and of the Polynesian custom of sometimes offering certain village females to white visitors as tokens of friendship, but he apparently had not heard about [an unpleasant episode involving] Peruvian slavers and the... cannibals' recent oath of vengeance. He was captured the second he put foot on shore. Islanders "pinched him repeatedly, bent his fingers and thumbs over the backs of his hands, [and] wrenched his nose... Those who were not actively engaged in mistreating Whalon's body began distributing his clothing and buttons among the crowd of onlookers." A native Hawaiian missionary and his buddies managed to spirit Whalon away, and Lincoln subsequently bestowed honors on them. They wrote a thank-you note, but by the time it got there, he had been assassinated, and the cannibal episode largely forgotten.[9] Pretty In InkBraving potentially dangerous conditions, tattoo artists viewed the region with interest. Missionaries claimed "tattooing is numbered among the works of darkness and is abandoned wherever Christianity is received." However, when Germany took control of Western Samoa, the second governor thumbed his nose at the missionaries and got a tattoo. Such an effort was not a little impressive to the locals, who perceived the tattoo as a rite of passage and a painful one at that. Augustin Kramer wrote an account of native life in 1903, called Die Samoa-Inseln, and details the tattooing procedure: The tattoo artist must have good assistants when he works [on the genitals], for penetrating the crack between the buttocks requires great skill and perseverance, as does the tattooing of the anus, the perineum, the scrotum, and the penis, including the glans. This part of the operation is always unpleasant. No kidding. Tattooing was seen as something that makes a boy into a man, although women also had extensive body art. Frederick O'Brien, in his account White Shadows in the Dark Seas, discussed a South Pacific queen with "a leg so perfect in mold and so elaborately and artistically inked that it distinguished her even more than her rank. Casual whites, especially, considered it a curiosity, and offended her majesty by laying democratic hands upon the masterpiece."[10] A Free Lover's QuarrelUnpleasant ends to offensive white visitors notwithstanding, anthropologist Margaret Mead made her way out there in 1925, and reported in her Coming of Age in Samoa that the place was a free-love utopia. Well, sort of. After she died, anthropologist Derek Freeman decided she was wrong, and started what is one of the most preeminent controversies in the field: that she had been duped by her interviewees and that Samoa was as uptight as everywhere else.[11]
While the controversy has its share of lurid details (our favorite is the suggestion that chicken's blood was substituted in rituals of public defloration of virgins), Mead's study seems to have irked some Samoans, which have since become fairly Westernized and not likely to be caught walking around naked outside much any more. However, for everybody else it seems to have entrenched the idea of a South Pacific utopia. Which is probably why the Post Office finally knuckled under. And why not? The institution had already tacitly endorsed this idea when it released a Margaret Mead stamp in 1998. How can one resist lauding a culture with a past, perhaps legendary, of such easygoing ways and id fulfillment? Given the connections of tattooing and tawdry sexual escapades, Samoa is the perfect culture to earn a stamp. If one actually cares to listen to the Samoans rather than anthropologists, of course, you'll get a different picture of their homeland entirely. They seem to a fairly mellow lot. Except for getting all mad at Snapple, that is. Footnotes
Bibliography
|
| |
| |
| |
 ©1996-2006 History House Inc.All Rights Reserved. |
|
| |
| |
