Black Saturday

The story of the Mau of Samoa and its treatment by the New Zealand colonial administration

Killed by the police, Tupua Tamasese. National Library, New Zealand

German Samoa logo

German ship Adler after the Great Hurricane

Chinese Samoan children: National Library, New Zealand

New Zealand raises the flag in Samoa: National Library, New Zealand

Influenza carrier Talune: National Library, New Zealand

The Mau: National Library, New Zealand

Braisby, Samoa's police chief. National Library, New Zealand

Mau march. National Library, New Zealand

Samoan chiefs at Mulinu'u

Black Saturday: 

New Zealand's tragic blunders in Samoa

by Michael Field

Reeds

An extract ...

After World War One, New Zealanders exhibited no particular enthusiasm for ruling Pacific Islands . Newspapers seldom reported on events in the New Zealand territories – Samoa, Cook Islands, Niue and Tokelau. One of the reasons that tragedy unfolded in Samoa was that this lack of interest translated into a willingness to leave it to a few to rule Samoans.

Two issues featured in the thinking of the exclusively narrow, male-dominated world of New Zealand colonial rulers. One was that Samoans were little more than stone-age children and the other was a variation on Rudyard Kipling’s ‘’White Man’s burden’’ with its dark and deeply hypocritical view on the gloriously leaden term of miscegenation. That was based on a solidly Victorian concept of blood purity.

But the problem for white New Zealand rulers was the evident willingness of white men not only to engage in casual sex with Polynesians – something that happened right from first contact – but to also marry and have families. It was difficult to impose a racial rule when so many people were willing to make personal exceptions.

New Zealand ’s first administrator, Robert Logan, was a strong opponent of it and this brought open conflict with the Chinese in Samoa . Lin Jun Chao, the Chinese Consul in Apia during the Great War, said there were around 100 Samoan-Chinese couples in Samoa , with 118 children between them. This outraged Logan, who believed it was polluting the Samoan race.

In 1921 the New Zealand Parliament passed a law outlawing sex between Chinese and Samoans.

Logan was less concerned about the 1200 ‘afakasi or white-Samoan children. While such miscegenation did nothing for the English race, such was his view of the world that the admixture of white blood didn’t do the Samoans any harm. However Logan led the way in a belief that ‘afakasi – almost a separate race – were the ultimate menace to good government in Samoa .

Although Logan claimed that Samoan leadership was opposed to mixed race marriage, there never seemed any general proscription of on interracial relationships from the Samoan side. Indeed in many cases it was encouraged and attitudes suggested a strong Samoan belief that they could turn any outsider marrying into the family into a Samoan in short order.

Samoan-white marriages irritated a later administrator, General George Richardson, who wrote of the gruesome prospects of the white partner. Such a person had no hope of leaving the tropics and ‘’little prospects of his half-caste children becoming a credit and honour to himself owing to the drawbacks from which hey suffer on account of the uneugenic mating of the parents, the European father finds himself drawn back into the Native or semi-Native circle, and ultimately gives up the struggle to maintain the prestige of his race.’’

Administrator Stephen Allen described the Samoan wives of whites as ‘’whores’’. Such marriages had no future: ‘’…after the first flush of romance is past he quickly realises that he has made a serious error, that his physically attractive young wife is mentally unsuited to make him a help-mate or congenial companion, while his half-breed children serve to remind him that he is permanently isolated from that which is so dear to the white man – his home and native country.’’

While the reputed sexuality of Polynesians was recognised quickly by the early European explorers, they were also quick to apply the term ‘’childish’’ to them. Describing Polynesians as ‘’childlike’’ was a popular theme of European writing almost from the beginning of white contact in the Pacific. James Cook, who was ultimately to give his life in his failure to understand Hawaiians, termed them childish.

Robert Louis Stevenson, the Treasure Island author now tourist-marketed as a great friend of Samoans, applied the world frequently to Samoans in his work. A founding professor of the University of Canterbury , John Macmillan Brown (1846-1935) who is now seen as a pioneer of Pacific studies, was fond of applying the term childish to Polynesians too. Logan labelled them childish. Over 7500 Samoans had died in the carelessly introduced 1918 influenza epidemic but Logan said the upset Samoans ‘’like children, they will get over it’’.

All administrators until the 1950s used the term. It is possible to see an innocent explanation for its use. In Samoa the childlikeness of Polynesians was stressed by a Samoan custom of referring to a figure of authority as tama, which translated as ‘’father’’. White New Zealanders, not even removed from the notion of ‘’Motherland’’ and ‘’Home’’ when thinking of King and Country, perhaps found the whole thing difficult to rationalise other than to see Samoans as ill-disciplined children.

The 1927 Royal Commission, for example, found it easier not to listen to Samoans by rebuking them for ‘’the almost childish desire … to give evidence’’.

A naval officer in Samoa said ‘’the Samoan is very childlike and can be easily led’’ and during the Mau period was ‘’a sulky and insubordinate child who had deliberately disobeyed his father’’.

Allen felt high chief Tupua Tamasese Lealofi IV was ‘’a spoilt child’’. New Zealand police killed him in an Apia street in 1929.

‘’The Native needs to have someone to pat him on the back when he is good, and to tell him he is naughty when he is bad,’’ wrote Allen, saying one had to remember the ‘’ limited mental capacity and remarkable credulity’’ of Samoan.

‘’The main thing to remember is that the Samoan never grows up, but always retains the mind and intellect of a child, reasons like a child, and behaves like a spoilt child – as he actually is. The Samoan has never had to think for himself.’’

Samoan men in their early 20s were ‘’the mental equal of a European boy of twelve or fourteen and he never advances beyond that stage.’’

Allen believed Samoans showed the quickness of an ape rather than anything human.

‘’Samoan form and ceremony, and especially Samoan speeches, are often quoted as marks of a high civilisation, but they really exhibit only what would be expected from grown up children.’’

Black Saturday: New Zealand ’s Tragic Blunders in Samoa , by Michael Field, published by Reed.

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Copyright: Michael Field