Sea of Glory

a simple reason for this. When it became clear that a man or woman was getting along in years, his or her son dug a grave and strangled the aged parent to death. It was not judged to be an act of cruelty; it was simply the way things were done in Fiji, a place where the value of a human life was said to equal a single sperm whale’s tooth. When a chief died, his many wives were put to death. Prior to the launching of a chief’s war canoe, the vessel’s deck was washed in human blood while the victims’ bodies were used as rollers to help launch the canoe into the sea.
    If tales such as these had a chilling effect on the officers and men of the Expedition, Reynolds soon discovered that as far as the Fijian children were concerned, he was the terrifying one. At one point he approached several youngsters, who ran away screaming to their parents. “And we, who can easily conjure up fright at the sight of a Savage,” he wrote, “do not so readily understand why a Savage (even if it be a Baby) should be terrified of us.”
     
    Fiji is part of Melanesia, or “the dark islands,” a term first coined by Dumont d’Urville to describe the skin color of the inhabitants of the islands stretching from Fiji to New Guinea to the west. The group appears to have been first settled by the same band of proto-Polynesian voyagers who would push on to Tonga and Samoa sometime around 800 B.C. About A.D. 1100, Fiji seems to have undergone a radical change. Whether it was due to the arrival of a new, more aggressive people or the result of a rise in population that led to increasing competition for natural resources, life on Fiji became decidedly more violent. In fact, warfare appears to have become a way of life. Circular forts were built just about everywhere, and cannibalism became one of the fundamental institutions of the islands. In the words of one archeologist, “man was the most popular of the vertebrate animals used for food.”
    In 1808, Fiji underwent another radical change with the arrival of a Swedish sailor appropriately named Charlie Savage. Along with some shipwrecked pals and a large supply of firearms, Savage and his cohorts introduced a more technologically advanced kind of killing to the islands, eventually hiring themselves out to Naulivou, the chief of the tiny island of Bau, just off the southeastern shore of Viti Levu. Naulivou used his newfound advantage to consolidate his position as the most powerful ruler in Fiji. In just five years, Savage’s brutal arrogance caught up with him, and he was killed and eaten at Vanua Levu. But his disturbing legacy lived on, with a succession of sailors serving as what became known as the chiefs’ “tame white men.”
    When Wilkes arrived in Fiji, the most prominent of these white men was a former Nantucketer named David Whippy. Whippy had been living in Fiji for eighteen years and had several native wives. When he paddled up to the Vincennes soon after the squadron’s arrival at Ovalau, Whippy was accompanied by one of his many children. Despite having begun his career in Fiji as a musket-toting mercenary, Whippy had gained a well-deserved reputation for reliability—not a common trait among the beachcombers of the Pacific. Attaching himself to the chief of Levuka, Whippy had earned the title of “Mata-ki-Bau” or Royal Messenger to Bau, and his close connection to this native power center would enable him to offer Wilkes essential advice during the squadron’s stay in Fiji. Wilkes decided to send a message to the current chief of Bau, Naulivou’s brother Tanoa, asking that he visit him at Levuka. He then hastily organized a climb up the nearby peak of Nadelaiovalau, so as to introduce the officers and scientists to the geography of the island group.
    At 7:30 A.M. the party of twenty-five officers and naturalists, along with Whippy and a large group of natives, began the more than two-thousand-foot climb. Almost two years at sea had left them ill prepared for such a demanding hike. “I have seldom witnessed a party so helpless as ourselves appeared,” Wilkes wrote, “in comparison with the natives and white residents, who ran over the rocks like goats.” Before long, both Hudson and Passed Midshipman Henry Eld, two of the larger officers in the squadron, were too winded to continue.
    As they scrambled up the perpendicular cliffs, Wilkes noticed that the natives would occasionally pull a leaf from a tree and throw it to the ground. Whippy explained that