JT
Joined: Jan 04, 2003
Posts: 3772
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JT
Ya' gotta read this. Okay where's HulaHula. Ya' gotta read dis brah!
Chapter 8 "Savage Island"
Idly tracing the "Resolution's" path (Cook's second ship) westward across the Pacific on an old chart, my finger brushed against a flyspeck labeled "Savage Island." I checked the index of Cook's journal. A brief entry from June 1774 explained the atoll's intriguing name. When the English attempted to land, islanders burst from dense woods "with the ferocity of wild Boars," Cook wrote, hurling rocks and spears. Cook and his men fired at their attackers, "stout well made men and naked except their Natural parts." A footnote said that the warriors' mouths were smeared red, as if with blood. "Seeing no good was to be got of these people," Cook wrote, he withdrew to the boats, gave the island it's unflattering name, and sailed off.
(Fast forward to the Author's travels to the same island...he meets a man named Matagi.)
I told him about our travels and asked if Cook's brief visit to the island was remembered today. "Oh yes," Matagi said. "Traditionally, our foes came from the sea. So anyone landing here was seen as an enemy. Cook's men fired at our people, we retaliated with rocks and spears, and Cook ran away." He said the musket fire reminded the Niueans of thunder, so they called the sailors "palagi", or sky burst, and still used the term today when speaking of foreigners. {The same word appears, in different form, across Polynesia; some scholars believe it refers not to gunfire, but to the belief that the strange ships had "burst from the sky."}"What about the red teeth?" I asked. Matagi looked at his shoes. His grandfather Hafe, "You must understand, we are not cannibals," "People wanted to defend their property, that is all. We had a tradition: when enemies came we did a war dance like the Maori. Warriors painted their lips and teeth with the juice of the hulahula, the red banana, to frighten people off."
"Does anyone still call this Savage Island?"
Hafe's face reddened. "Cook called Tonga the Friendly Isles, probably because he had so many girls there. Tahiti he called the Society Islands, same reason. The Cook Islands were named after him. Nice names. But because we threw a few stones and spears, we're savages." "No one likes Cook much in Nuie." The two men went inside.
"Good one, mate," Roger said. You with your crass, bull-nosing American technique, exposing a raw nerve and then poking at it."
"But we learned something. Cook got scared off by red bananas!"
So there you have the story of how David took the name here on TC, of HulaHula. Red Banana.
[ Edited by: jungletrader on 2003-11-16 22:09 ]
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