Parkinson's Journal, Otaheite, page 51

Page 51

Parkinson's Journal

On this day ...
4 May 1769

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Otaheite

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Otaheite (continued)

These people go to war in large canoes, at one end of which there is a kind of stage erected, supported by four carved pillars, and is called tootee. Their weapons are a kind of clubs, and long wooden lances. They have also bows and arrows. The former are made of a strong elastic wood. The arrows are a small species of reed, or bamboes, pointed with hard wood, or with the sting of the ray-fish, which is a sharp-bearded bone. [See pl. XIII. fig. 13.] They also make use of slings, [see ibid. fig. I.] made of the fibres of the bark of some tree, of which, in general, they make their cordage too: some of them, as well as their slings, are neatly plaited. Their hatchets, or rather adzes, which they call towa, are made by tying a hard black stone, of the kind of which they make their paste-beaters, to the end of a wooden handle; and they look very much like a small garden hoe: and the stone part is ground or worn to an edge. [See pl. XIII. fig. 9.] The making of these stone-instruments must be a work of time, and laborious, as the stone of which they are made is very hard. The natives have maros, or pieces of cloth, which reach up from the waist, to defend them from the lances, or bunches of hair curiously plaited. They also wear teepootas upon their heads, and taowmees, or a kind of breast-plate, hung about their necks; [see pl. XI.] large turbans too, in which they stick a small bunch of parrot’s feathers; [see pl. XIII. fig. 12.] and sometimes use what they call a whaow, which is a large cap of a conical figure. In their heivos, or war-dances, they assume various antic motions and gestures, like those practised by the girls when they dance taowree whaow,* playing on a clapper made of two mother-of-pearl shells; and make the ephaita, or wry mouth, [see pl. VII. fig. 2.] as a token of defiance: they also join their hands together, moving them at the same time, and clap the palms of their hands upon their breasts near their shoulders. When they sight in their boats, they generally throw a string to one another to fasten the canoes together; and the men who are employed in doing this are never struck at †.

* A kind of diversion.

† We saw two men who had been pierced through the skull by stones from a sling; the wounds were healed up, but had left a large operculum.

Voyaging Accounts

© Derived from the London 1773 edition printed for Stanfield Parkinson, page 24, 2004
Published by kind permission of the Library
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