2
The first attempt to convert the Tongans to Christianity was made by the London Missionary Society, a Protestant interdenominational body. The reports of the explorers, particularly those of Captain James Cook, together with accounts of atrocities committed by some unruly Europeans among the Pacific islanders, were widely read in England towards the end of the eighteenth century. In order to save the South Sea islanders from both heathenism and the lawlessness of certain Europeans, many people in England, particularly the evangelicals, believed that the best way was to Christianise and civilise them (Morrell 1960:28-31). For this purpose the missionary ship, Duff, under Captain James Wilson, was sent to the Pacific in 1796 by the L.M.S. with missionaries for Tahiti, Tonga and the Marquesas.
Captain Wilson landed ten missionaries in Tongatapu on 12 April 1797 (Wilson 1799:105-6). They were under the protection of Tuku’aho, the most powerful chief in Tonga at the time, and his aged father, Mumui, who was then the Tu’i Kanokupolu. This well-meaning effort was doomed to fail right from the beginning, for the missionaries were ill-equipped for this tremendous task, and the Tongans themselves were not ready for the new religion.1
Initially cordial relationships were maintained between the missionaries and the leading Tongan chiefs, but the problem of communication proved a formidable barrier between the two parties. For months the missionaries were unable to communicate with the people about Christianity, let alone conduct any religious services for the people because of their ignorance of the language. Most of their time was spent in trying to establish a garden and learn the language, and worrying about the safety of their diminishing trade goods.
It was soon apparent that the Tongan chiefs were only interested in the missionaries’ trade goods and not their teachings. The early good relationship was due mainly to the missionaries’ ability to satisfy the chiefs’ demands for European goods. When the chiefs, at the instigation of three beachcombers, Ambler, Morgan and Connelly, demanded the expulsion of the missionaries from Tonga, Mulikiha’amea, the then Tu’i Ha’atakalaua replied:
However, as their supplies began to decrease, and the missionaries became less generous with their gifts, thefts occurred. One of the missionaries, Vason, was attacked one night and had his pistol stolen.
Added to the missionaries’ problem were the hostile reactions of the beachcombers to their presence in Tonga, After the missionaries refused their unreasonable demands for trade goods, the three beachcombers told the Tongans that they themselves were men of high rank in England, but the missionaries were only commoners, and that in their prayer meetings they were praying to their gods to kill off the Tongan chiefs. Unfortunately for the missionaries, four leading chiefs died within three months of their arrival (Wilson 1799:257), and the Tongans took this as proof of the truth of the beachcombers’ allegations. During the civil war in 1799, three of the missionaries were killed,2 and the rest had to leave Tonga for New South Wales in 1800 after being stripped of their possessions, except Vason who ‘went native’.3
Interest in missionary work in Tonga, however, did not disappear completely with its abandonment by the L.M.S. missionaries. One of those who escaped to New South Wales, Shelley, retained a lively interest in the people of the group. Several times he pleaded unsuccessfully with various mission bodies to reopen the mission work in Tonga. However, after his death his widow excited the interest of a young Methodist minister in Sydney, the Reverend Walter Lawry, with the tragic stories her late husband had told her about their few years in Tonga (Findlay and Holds-worth 1921:267). Eventually Lawry managed to persuade the British Wesleyan Methodist Conference (at this time the Methodist people in New South Wales were still under the British Methodist Conference) to appoint him with another minister to the mission field in Tonga.
Among the circumstances favouring his proposal was the news of the success of the L.M.S. in Tahiti, which had reached England and caused tremendous excitement among the evangelicals there, at the same time creating sympathy and sorrow for the forsaken people of the Friendly Islands. It was not difficult therefore to persuade the British Wesleyan Conference to send missionaries to Tonga, and Lawry was the first appointed.
Lawry decided to leave for Tonga without delay. Accompanied by his wife, their child, a carpenter, George Lilley, a blacksmith, Charles Tindall, and a young man from the Marquesas, Macanoe, to act as interpreter, Lawry arrived in Tonga on 16 August 1822 (Lawry, Diary, 16 Aug. 1822). He decided to reside at Mu’a, the then capital of Tonga, under the chief Fatu, son of the last Tu’i Ha’atakalaua, Mulikiha’amea. It was soon obvious, however, that their favourable reception was due more to his supply of goods than his teachings. Eventually, the opposition of the traditional priests and the people was so strong, and the constant threats to kill the missionary so affected Mrs Lawry’s health, that Lawry decided to abandon the mission. He and his family left Tonga on 3 October the following year, 1823, while Lilley and Tindall stayed behind. Macanoe, who apparently was not successful as an interpreter, died in Tonga from illness.
It was not until 28 June 1826 that Lawry’s successors, the Reverend John Thomas and the Reverend John Hutchinson, arrived in Tonga (see Lātūkefu 1969). They had intended to go to Mu’a where Lawry had been stationed, but Tindall advised them against this, and recommended that they should go instead to Hihifo. Apparently Fatu had ill-treated Lilley and Tindall after the departure of Lawry. The chief of Hihifo, Ata, gave the new missionaries a piece of land at Kolovai, and was friendly to them, but he refused to accept the new religion personally and forbade his people to join the mission. Frustrated by their failure to win Ata and the people of Hihifo to Christianity, and because of the growing hostility of the people, Thomas and Hutchinson decided to abandon the work in Tonga altogether. The situation was aggravated by the failure of Hutchinson’s health and also by the continuing petty quarrelling between the two missionaries. Accordingly, when a new assistant, I.V.M. Weiss, arrived with his wife in Tonga in 1827, Thomas sent them back in the same boat, a small whaler, with a request to the brethren in Sydney to send a bigger vessel to bring all of them back to Sydney with all the mission property (Findlay and Holdsworth 1921:283). After emergency meetings in Sydney the brethren rejected Thomas’s request and decided instead that Nathaniel Turner, William Cross and Weiss should leave for Tonga immediately to prevent the mission from being abandoned again. The new arrivals saved the work in Tonga. They were stationed at Nuku’alofa while Thomas and Huchinson carried on the work at Hihifo. The situation at Hihifo continued to deteriorate and, finally, in 1829, the brethren decided to close down the station there for the time being. It was not reopened until 1837.
This brief outline of what happened in the work of the Wesleyan missionaries in Tonga before 1830 clearly shows that, during the first few years of their attempts to convert and to civilise the Tongans, the Wesleyan pioneering missionaries encountered continual frustration. This was mainly because of the strong opposition they had to face, not only from the Tongans themselves but also from other Europeans who had found their way to these islands. In addition, the lack of proper preparation for their task, the absence of constructive imagination among some of the missionaries, and the rather unfortunate relationship between John Thomas and John Hutchinson further aggravated the situation.
Led by the traditional priests and many of the chiefs, the Tongans put up strong opposition to the work of the missionaries (see Lātūkefu 1966). Much of this opposition appeared to have been basically a conservative reaction against anything new. It sprang from a desire to preserve the status quo. They felt that the old standards and values ought to be safeguarded, not only because they were still more meaningful and were believed to be more relevant to their present needs, but also because of the chiefs’ own deep loyalty and respect for their ancestors and their beliefs. This sentiment was at the heart of Ata’s rejection of Christianity. He told Thomas bluntly ‘that he would not pray but that he wished to end in the way he was in, it being the way his friends were in before him’ (Thomas, Journal, 19 Jan. 1929). Asked later by Nathaniel Turner if he would change his mind about accepting Christianity, Ata replied, ‘I will not attend to your religion. My mind is fixed ... It is very good for you to attend to your God, and I will attend to mine...’ (N. Turner, Journal, 16 July 1829). Obviously, the traditional leaders feared that Christianity as presented by the Wesleyan Methodist missionaries with its ‘strange’ scale of values and moral standards threatened to annihilate most of their treasured customs and traditions. Most of them coveted European goods, technical knowledge and firearms, but were not prepared to replace their traditional values and customs with those of the missionaries. John Thomas wrote:
The commoners followed their chiefs as they had always done, for fear of immediate punishment and divine retribution.
For their own interest the priests, in particular, were anxious to keep the commoners’ fear alive. Although the priestly class in Tonga did not have the same socio-political importance which the members of their order enjoyed in some other places in the Pacific, they were still treated by the Tongan people with considerable respect and fear. The veneration offered to a priest depended upon the rank of the god who inspired him. Although the power of the priests was second only to that of the chiefs, it was more religious in nature. Their power to curse (talatuki) was revered by all (West 1865:257). They were always consulted as to the will of the gods with regard to sickness, natural disaster, voyages, war and so on, and a very high fee was charged for the consultation (Watkin, Journal, 7 Feb. 1834).
It was obvious from the beginning that the intrusion of Christianity, with its strange and more sophisticated order of priesthood, meant the decline and in due course the disappearance of the traditional priesthood, together with all the power, honour and privileges its members had enjoyed for centuries. This was a significant loss and, as might be expected, the members of the old order were prepared to fight to retain their position.
Describing the state of affairs in his station Thomas (1879:57) wrote:
After the death of a man at Hihifo, old Fai’ana, the priestess, told the people that she had a dream in which the deceased had told her that the missionaries had informed him that if he joined the lotu he would not die, intimating that the missionaries had lied (Thomas, Journal, 30 Jan. 1829). Again, after a severe storm one priest told the people that Pulotu Kātoa (one of the most revered gods) had been ‘tired with the tardy movements of his faithful worshippers, the Tonguese heathens, in reference to making war upon the Christians [had] at length taken the matter into his own hands and his weapons of war [were] to be drought and storms...’ (Watkin, Journal, 21 Dec. 1826).
However, it is quite evident that the opposition raised by the priests was not in any way comparable with that offered by the chiefs. The honour and privileges that the priests had enjoyed in the old order were nothing compared with those which the chiefs, for instance, had enjoyed. But the fact that they threw their weight behind the opposition of the chiefs was quite significant.
It was the chiefs who had most to lose from the encroaching influence of the missionaries. Here lay the basis for their antagonism, and, because they had traditionally held all power in their hands, their opposition was formidable and was clearly understood by the missionaries.
The missionaries’ teaching that all men were equal in the sight of God, their belief that everyone was a sinner by nature and that in order to get to heaven everyone, irrespective of rank, had to submit to certain moral discipline, and their preaching that no one, chief or otherwise, had any right to appropriate to himself any property belonging to another, were particularly unpopular with the chiefs, since these doctrines tended to undermine their status, privileges and authority. Since almost every heathen custom, which the missionaries regarded as contrary to Christianity and civilisation and were determined to eradicate, played some part in upholding the dignity and privileges of the chiefs, it was inevitable that the majority of the chiefs should clash with the missionaries over the maintenance of these traditional customs.
The missionaries, for one reason or another, appeared to have lacked the ability to differentiate between those customs which were incompatible with Christian principles and those which were contrary only to their own British middle-class moral standards. For this reason they failed to appreciate the psychological and social significance of some of the old customs and traditions to the Tongans themselves. An example may be seen in the perpetual conflict between the missionaries and the chiefs over the question of tukuofo. This custom was performed at the funeral of any member of a chiefly family. On such an occasion the people under the rule of the chief concerned, his friends and relatives in particular, would bring gifts of ngatu (tapa cloth), mats of various kinds, and articles of food and drink to him.
From the commoners’ point of view, this was an expression of their love and respect for the deceased, sympathy for the bereaved, and also a manifestation of their regard and loyalty to their leader. For the relatives it provided an opportunity for an extended family gathering, where they learned to know each other personally, and also their various responsibilities to each other. The warmth of filial devotion and the strength of family ties were further kindled and strengthened on such occasions. The bereaved chiefs themselves were comforted. They also appreciated the fact that the commoners’ (or rather their subjects’) sorrow and devotion were being expressed in a practical way.
The chiefs were often reminded on such occasions of their responsibilities to their people and this helped to maintain good relationships between them and their people, all of which furthered the maintenance of stability and order in the community. The missionaries did not seem to understand, let alone to appreciate, these implications. The fact that some of the ngatu and mats were used to wrap up the deceased for burial, and that the food presented was prepared to feed the people present, caused the missionaries to view the tukuofo, rather mistakenly, as an offering to the dead.
Tukuofo was also regarded as a means used by the chiefs to accumulate wealth at the expense of the commoners. ‘I wish to see the tukuofo—quite put down—’ wrote John Thomas, ‘but this is the craft by which many Tonga chiefs have their wealth. They would be glad to keep it up’ (Thomas, Journal, 24 Dec. 1826). It may be pointed out that the chiefs did not demand the tukuofo. It came from the people quite spontaneously and freely and from a sense of responsibility.
Another point of conflict between the chiefs and the missionaries was the chiefs’ jealousy towards the rival for their authority. The priests of the old order exercised power over the people only during their brief periods of inspiration. For the most part they were, like the rest of the population, under the power of the chiefs. The missionaries held a different view of their own power. They regarded themselves as heads of their respective stations. Therefore all their converts, chiefs and people alike, had to obey them—their pastors—in all matters connected with the mission (Thomas 1825-35:153). For this reason and also because they were always convinced that they had a superior background, the missionaries often condescended to and even despised the chiefs, who were naturally antagonised by such an attitude. Ata complained that Thomas had been trying to make himself chief over his (Ata’s) own people (Thomas, Journal, 18 Oct. 1828).
There is little doubt that the combined opposition of the Tongans led by the traditional priests and some of the chiefs during the first few years of the work of the Wesleyan missionaries in Tonga contributed significantly to the failures of Lawry at Mu’a in 1822-3 and of Thomas and Hutchinson at Hihifo in 1826-9.
The missionaries’ frustration was further aggravated by the strong opposition to their work from their own fellow-countrymen—beachcombers, whalers and traders who were also important mediators of change in Tonga. The arrival of the First Fleet at Port Jackson on 26 January 1788, and the subsequent establishment of the first European settlement in the Pacific, had far-reaching consequences for the whole South Seas region. The impact of this penal settlement was soon felt in Tonga. Whether this was on account of Cook’s reports concerning the friendly nature of the inhabitants of Tonga, or because Governor Phillip had been instructed to obtain women from the Friendly Islands as wives for convicts (Clark 1958:36), or for some other reasons, there were soon escaped convicts who found their way to Tonga and settled among the Tongans.
Ships from various European nations and the United States of America frequented the South Seas, attracted by the opportunities for trade in such diverse items as sandalwood, pork, bêche-de-mer, turtle shell, coconut oil and also by whaling. Others brought scientific expeditions for the exploration of the newly discovered islands. Many of these vessels visited Tonga and some were captured and their crews massacred (see Dillon 1829, 1:274). Some mariners survived and, like the escaped convicts, remained in the islands of Tonga. Ships’ deserters as well as sailors abandoned on account of illness or misadventure also made their homes among the Tongans.
These men had in common the fact that none of them sought to interfere with the way of life of the inhabitants of Tonga (see H.E. Maude 1964:293). They were quite content to live among the Tongans and to accept their way of life. They had good reason to feel contented, for many of them were devoid of any social standing in their homeland. In Tonga, on the other hand, they lived among the chiefs, some of them being accepted as close friends and advisers, particularly in time of war, and they were accorded all the honours and respect normally shown to the nobility.
Most of these men possessed special skills, such as the working of metals, which were of great value to the chiefs, since iron tools were highly prized by the Tongans. Captain Peter Dillon, in 1827, found an American living with a chief in ’Eua. Dillon was told by him that he had been employed in repairing firearms, fish hooks and the like, and that he was kept amply supplied with produce of the country and was highly esteemed by the natives. The chief had shown him great kindness and had honoured him with his daughter for a wife (Dillon 1829, 1:262-3).
Europeans were regarded as extremely valuable additions to a chief’s household, and their mere presence became a source of social prestige. Consequently, they were keenly sought after and, at times, there were disastrous consequences, as can be seen in the following incident as told to Peter Dillon by John Singleton, one of the survivors of the Port-au-Prince:
Had Captain Dumont d’Urville been aware of the real reason for this seizure of his men, he might have been more lenient in his handling of this unfortunate affair. As it happened, two armed boats were sent from the ship to search for the men. The search party burnt down several houses and wounded two Tongans, who later died, and one of their men was killed, without finding any trace of the two men. Finally, the captain decided to keep the village of Ma’ofanga under fire for two days, with the result that, on the third day, the men re-embarked without having received any injury.
On the whole, relations between the beachcombers and the Tongans were harmonious and they lived quite amicably together before the arrival of the missionaries. The beachcombers helped to explain to the Tongans the various aspects of the white man’s culture—his customs, economic system, technology, literacy and even religion (H.E. Maude 1968:163). Some were instrumental in paving the way for the work of the missionaries, and others helped the missionaries in their work. Lawry used Singleton of the Port-au-Prince as an interpreter. Before Thomas and Hutchinson arrived in 1826, Lolohea, one of the first converts in Tonga, and his brother who lived in Vava’u at the time ‘were impressed by a few words about Jehovah, spoken to them by a sailor who lived in that island’ (Farmer 1855:179). King George persuaded a sailor who lived under his protection in Ha’apai to show him and his people how to write and conduct prayers to the Christian God, and in 1827 ’Ulukālala Tuapasi of Vava’u persuaded a sailor to write a letter for him to the missionaries in Tongatapu asking for a missionary of his own (Turner 1872:102-3).
The arrival and continued presence of the missionaries in Tonga was not, however, welcomed by many of these men. They feared that the missionaries would expose them to their chiefly hosts and thereby undermine their prestige and newly found privileges, and destroy the Polynesian way of life which they favoured and wanted to preserve. Consequently, some made every effort to make life unpleasant for the missionaries. Nathaniel Turner wrote:
John Thomas told of an Englishman by the name of James who had since been captured in Tonga by the captain of a British man-of-war for his part in stealing a vessel at Van Diemen’s Land. According to Thomas, James, while in Ha’apai, planned to kill him and Tāufa’āhau, ‘and the reason he assigned for so strange a conduct’, wrote Thomas, ‘was because I knew of his crime, he having confessed it to two Englishmen who made it their business to inform me of it’ (Thomas, Journal, 29 April 1831). Woon, a later missionary, complaining about the conduct of these men, wrote, ‘We have been much tried of late from the wicked conduct of some of our countrymen, who seem to defy the laws of God ... Some have been so wicked as to say, that our religion is a lie’ (Woon to Committee, 19 Jan. 1833, WMMS 1818-36, item A2838).
Although the escaped convicts, ships’ deserters and castaways do not appear to have made any direct contribution to political development, their presence among the Tongans and their work in making and repairing tools for them, explaining the European culture, and advising them in warfare, stimulated the general desire for change. Their negative reactions to the missionaries, however, and to the emerging monarchical authority, and rule of law, which the latter had encouraged and assisted, met with disfavour from the British officials and, in some instances, they were deported. Indirectly, the prestige of the missionaries was enhanced as these men were discredited and their reputation among the Tongans badly damaged.
Towards the end of the eighteenth century and early in the nineteenth century the discovery of rich new whaling grounds in the western and central Pacific brought many whalers to the area. Tonga received its share of these visits and the whalers engaged in trade, exchanging beads, cloth, iron tools and muskets for fresh provisions of fruit, vegetables, pork, coconut oil and other native produce. The missionaries felt rather uneasy about the presence of the whalers. Nathaniel Turner wrote:
Later it became increasingly clear that the uneasiness of the missionaries mainly rested upon their fears that the whalers called at the islands not merely in search of provisions, but also to win the favours of the Tongan women. Yet in this respect the teachings of the missionaries had been readily accepted. Peter Turner reported that the captain and the supercargo of a vessel which left Tonga three days previously had done ‘all they could to induce some of the females to go on board but all their efforts were futile’ (P. Turner, Journal, 28 April 1832).
The whalers, for their part, felt antipathy towards the missionaries on account of this and tried to seize every opportunity to discredit them and undermine their work. They gained sufficient influence to delay the conversion of some of the remote islands of the group (Amos to Committee, 11 Sept. 1857, WMMSA 1852-79, item 170).
The attention of traders to Tonga was first aroused by Captain Cook’s praise for the Tongans for their keen interest in trade. He claimed that ‘Perhaps, no nation in the world traffic with more honesty and less distrust’ (Cook and King 1784:384). Many years later, Peter Dillon (1829, 1:277) added to this view when he wrote:
These glowing reports soon made Tonga a popular port of call for shipping. Traders of all kinds called for provisions, both before and after the establishment of the Wesleyan mission.
In general, the traders and missionaries did not get on well, but there were a few traders who were convinced that the work of the missionaries was definitely advantageous to trade and commerce. Many of these were sons of missionaries who had been born or brought up in the islands. These men maintained good relations with both the missionaries and native leaders, particularly those who had accepted Christianity through the work of the Protestant missionaries, and mutual respect, friendship and help prevailed among them. They did their utmost to assist the work of missionaries, who naturally reciprocated.
Samuel Pinder Henry, a trader son of a missionary in Tahiti, was friendly with the Tu’i Kanokupolu Siosaia Aleamotu’a of Tonga. Arrangements were made with Aleamotu’a to obtain some Tongans to accompany Henry to the New Hebrides to cut sandalwood. Sickness prevented Henry from joining his vessel which called for the men. Unknown to him, his crew had brought some prostitutes in the ship from New Zealand. When the King, who had already become a convert, found this out, he decided to prevent the Tongans from boarding the vessel. However, Nathaniel Turner, who was acquainted with Henry and knew of his reputation for assisting missionaries throughout the islands, persuaded Aleamotu’a not to break his promise and thereby penalise Henry for the misconduct of his crew. He pleaded that it would have been a different matter if Henry himself had been aboard the vessel. The King was eventually persuaded to drop his objections and the Tongans were permitted to join the ship (N. Turner to Committee, 15 May 1829, WMMS 1818-36, item A2835).
Such dissensions as did take place between some of the traders and the missionaries may be attributed to a number of factors. Certain missionaries were worried about the effects of trade upon their converts:
The traders were resentful of the fact that the missionaries were chiefly responsible for the growing sophistication of the people in the art of trade. In the early days they were able to fill their ships with provisions in exchange for a few guns, beads, nails, pieces of hoop iron and cheap calico and printed cloth. After the establishment of the mission and the introduction of schools, the people were taught the value of money and of articles of trade among the civilised countries. They soon refused to trade for cheaper goods and wanted either payment in money or more valuable articles. Peter Turner recorded on his way to Tonga by ship in 1831:
Among the severest critics of the missionaries was the trader, Peter Dillon, and, in defending the mission against his accusations, the Reverend David Cargill (1842:29-30) wrote:
Another source of conflict was over the question of the sale of liquor in Tonga. Selling ‘grog’ was a source of handsome profit for the traders. The missionaries, however, objected strongly to this form of trade. They were convinced that it was harmful to the people and would ruin their efforts. A later missionary wrote:
Another major sorce of discord between the traders and the missionaries was over the question of women. John Thomas (Journal, 19 Mar. 1831) recorded the following episode:
Another example of the clashes over women was reported by Rabone (Journal, 2 Aug. 1836) who commented upon certain incidents in his journal which ‘made us ashamed of the name of Englishmen’. It appears that a Captain Brind of the trading vessel Tower Castle called at the island of Rotuma and, as several Rotumans wished to go to Tonga, he offered to take them. On leaving the island he took one female as his mistress, but after being at sea four days, in a fit of drunkenness he threw her overboard. His crew rescued the woman, without his knowledge, and stowed her away. Meanwhile he had taken another female, a young virgin, who was on her way to Tonga to marry a young chief. These actions grieved both the Rotumans and the Tongans very deeply. On a later voyage, he returned to Tonga and invited some Tongans and Rotumans on board, among whom was the young chief, who objected to his wife going. A fight broke out between one of Brind’s men and the chief in which the young chief was killed. When this became known to the Tongans, a few hours later, they took the murderer and killed him.
The missionaries believed that the conduct of these captains was responsible for some of the ‘evil doings’ of the natives, of which they later complained when they returned to their home ports (P. Turner 1831-38:75).
For a variety of reasons the non-missionary Europeans who found their way to Tonga before and immediately after the establishment of the Methodist mission in the group viewed the missionaries and their work as a threat to their own interests. Hence the bitterness of their opposition to the work of the missionaries. Although they failed to destroy the influence of the missionaries as some of them determined to do, their opposition caused the missionaries anguish and frustration.
In actual fact the missionaries were responsible for some of the causes of the frustration they had to face. This was mainly due to personality problems, inadequate preparations for their task, and an unfortunate lack of imagination and tact. They were quite certain of the superiority of their culture, the infallibility of their cause, and the absolute peril of the heathen. Convinced of their being called by God to save the lost, they saw as their mission the conversion of the Tongans at all cost if necessary, even if it entailed martyrdom on the one hand and a complete destruction of the traditional culture on the other. They identified Christianity with their own middle-class moral values at home and regarded any deviations from them as heathen and therefore unchristian and something that should be eradicated. Lawry’s view of the moral deprivation of the Tongans was shared by his successors. He wrote:
The traditional way of life in Tonga was then viewed as a means used by the devil to destroy the souls of the Tongans and to obstruct the cause of the Almighty, and since the missionaries believed that they were recruited to carry out Jehovah’s war against the devil, they could make no compromise. This attitude of mind helped to explain their intolerance of many of the traditional practices of the Tongans and their consequential and almost fanatical determination to stamp out heathenism in all its forms. A later missionary wrote:
The kind of attitudes which the missionaries exhibited in Tonga reflected their own social and religious background. Writing for Blackwood’s Magazine in 1890, the Reverend Coutts Trotter described the Wesleyan Methodist missionaries in Tonga as ‘Men often of narrow culture and lacking in imagination’ (Trotter 1890:142). This situation was not surprising since the majority of the parent body from which the Wesleyan missionaries were selected came from the lower middle and working classes of the British Isles. In a recent study of the politics of English dissent, R.G. Cowherd (1956:15) points out that ‘More than other Dissenting denominations, the Methodists recruited their ministers and members from the lower classes’. These Methodists had certain attitudes towards the social life of their day. According to one authority:
The theatre was regarded as a menace and a danger to morality. John Wesley called it ‘the sink of all profaneness and debauchery’ ( Works, VII:34). His followers shared this view. In 1808, the Edinburgh Review censured the Methodists for their opposition to the theatre and to other amusements (Edwards 1948:127), and in 1818 another reviewer reported that when two theatres, Covent Garden and Drury Lane, were destroyed, many Methodists openly rejoiced and made it an occasion of thanksgiving ( Quarterly Review, Nov. 1810, IV:491).
Concerning literature, the Methodists were only prepared to accept a very narrow and restricted range, most of which was produced by the Society itself. The Methodist Magazine, the only periodical produced by the Society for many years from Wesley’s time, was occupied almost exclusively with sermons, articles on matters of faith, and letters and memoirs of devout Methodists. After the death of Wesley, the Methodist Book Room published almost entirely religious works or works connected with religion. Most Methodist authors in the early nineteenth century devoted themselves either to publishing sermons or to writing memoirs. A few, such as Coke, Clarke, Benson and Sutcliffe, published commentaries on the Bible or wrote philosophical treatises. These, together with religious pamphlets, were regularly read.
Dancing, snuff-taking and smoking were denounced by the Conference, and Wesley claimed that dancing made debauchery easy and might lead young women to numberless evils ( Works, XII:39).
The Methodist leaders were particularly severe in their denunciation of spirituous liquors, except for medical purposes. Wesley strongly condemned the sale of spirits, and was deeply concerned with the ravages of gin and rum drinking on the nation. He demanded that distillation should be abolished, arguing that food was dear because of the immense quantity of corn consumed in distilling. He argued that spirituous liquors were deadly poison and that they destroyed not only the strength but the morals of those who consumed them. He therefore directed that Methodists undertake to taste no spirituous liquors unless prescribed by a physician. Those that followed him after his death maintained this attitude, and some went further and refused to drink wine, beer or even tea!
Gambling of any sort was bitterly opposed, on the grounds that it fostered covetousness, making men deprive their wives and families of money needed at home. Sports were frowned upon, for they were viewed as a waste of time which might have been spent in honest labour. They were also regarded as instruments used by the devil ‘to fill the mind with earthly, sensual and devilish passions’, making one ‘a lover of pleasure more than a lover of God’ (Wesley, Sermons, 11:955-6).
The Methodists also followed Wesley’s example in urging that Sunday be kept sacred. On this issue they joined that section of the English Dissent which held strong Sabbatarian views. The Quarterly Review (November 1810) complained that Methodists would not allow workers to work on a Sunday.
These attitudes were part and parcel of the lives of the missionaries. They believed them to point the way to the only way of life that true Christians should live, and that their converts in Tonga should follow them.
The narrowness of outlook and lack of imagination among some of the early missionaries were also caused by their lack of formal education and proper training for their task. The majority of them received only a very meagre formal education of the kind available to their social and economic classes at home at that time.4 The Reverend John Thomas, for example, was a village blacksmith in Worcestershire. According to the Society’s historians, ‘His upbringing was rustic, his education of the slenderest; he was taken straight from the village forge to be a Missionary at the ends of the earth’ (Findlay and Holdsworth 1921:278). This was typical of many of the missionaries, most of whom received their only formal education from the Methodist Sunday School, where pupils were instructed in reading, spelling and writing. The Reverend Peter Turner began work at the age of seven or eight, when his father, a cotton spinner in Manchester, took him to help as a piecer at the local mill. He received his only formal education at a local Sunday School (P. Turner, A brief account of myself, I).
Thomas himself admitted a sense of insufficiency. He wrote:
This lack of proper training and adequate preparation was a great handicap to Thomas and Hutchinson, as it was to their predecessor, Lawry. Their inability to understand the Tongan language caused much frustration in their relationship with the people.
Their lack of elementary or basic medical skills was also detrimental to their work. One of Ata’s sons, Mataele, took ill. His relatives took him to the god called Lātūfakahau, who was once a great chief in Tonga. Thomas went to Ata and told him and his people that they were foolish in doing so. He managed to persuade them to bring Mataele to his place. He bled him and gave him a little medicine but Mataele grew worse, so Mataele turned to the heathen gods and his relatives took him to another god’s house. After a few days Thomas called to see Mataele and found him much better, and he thought it likely that Mataele would recover. Although he was happy for Mataele to recover he had reasons to be greatly concerned. Ata had stated that should his son Mataele die, this would furnish proof that the Tongan gods were a lie, and he would lotu, but should his son recover he would maintain faith in the old gods (Thomas, Journal, 8 June 1829).
Mataele recovered, and Ata took this as proof that the gods of his fathers were true after all. From that time on, nothing could shake his faith in the Tongan gods. He bluntly refused to have anything to do with the new god of the white missionary and did everything he could to prevent his people from joining the new religion, the god of which, according to his judgment, had been proved false. In deep distress, John Thomas (Journal, 31 Jan. 1829) wrote:
In spite of working together in brotherly love in an all-out effort to remedy some of these deficiencies, Thomas and Hutchinson wasted much valuable time and energy in petty quarrelling, and writing lengthy letters to the authorities and friends accusing each other of improper conducts, disloyalty and lack of respect. The situation was aggravated by the failure of Hutchinson’s health, which may have been partly caused by this unhappy personal relationship between the two families. Blinded by their hatred of each other the two missionaries made no effort to keep this unfortunate situation to themselves. Each tried to win the support of the chiefs by exposing the weaknesses and failures of the other. In so doing Thomas and Hutchinson unwittingly stripped themselves of much of the respect that Ata and many of, his fellow chiefs at Hihifo might have had for them.
Not only did Thomas lack imagination, but, being young and inexperienced, he lacked tact. Had he been able to win Ata for the mission the whole of Hihifo would have turned with him to Christianity, as happened in other places where the chiefs were later won to Christianity. It would also have had significant impact on other chiefs in Tongatapu. Thomas himself wrote from Hihifo, ‘I am perfectly satisfied that, as it respects the inhabitants generally, they are ready to receive our instruction; and if the Chief [Ata] were favourable, hundreds would sit at the feet of the messenger of the living God’ ( W-M Mag., Sept. 1829:631). Ata’s brother, Tōfua, told John Thomas that if Ata were to turn Christian, he would turn too. Tu’ivakanō, the chief of Nukunuku, said to Thomas that he would lotu if Ata lotued. Tāufa, chief of Pea, said the same:
Thomas was not unaware of the importance of winning Ata to the mission. However, he appeared to be so arrogant and tactless in his dealings with the people, including the chiefs, that he inevitably antagonised many of them, and Ata in particular. One day Ata (who knew Thomas was a blacksmith by trade) sent a man with an axe to ask Thomas to sharpen it for him. Thomas sent the man back to Ata with the axe immediately with a message to say that he did not come to Tonga to sharpen axes. Ata on several occasions complained that Thomas tried to be chief among his people and Thomas, for some reason or other, kept telling the people that he was not afraid of Ata.
The last straw came when Ata’s wife, Papa, took some friends on tour of Thomas’s new house which was a novelty at the time. Being the wife of the chief of the area it was her prerogative to take her friends anywhere and to show them anything in the district. She did not have to consult anyone. For quite some time Thomas had built up a dislike for Papa whom he described as ‘a very idle woman. She is either eating or drinking or lying about in different places or sleeping from morning to night’ (Thomas, Journal, 24 July 1826). Thomas did not realise that, being a chiefly woman, Papa did not have to do any work. It was beneath the dignity of her office to work. Everything was done for her. However, in this case Thomas’s patience ran out, and he decided to reprimand Papa in front of her guests for bringing people into his house without his permission. To the Hihifo people this was sacrilege and, in fact, Thomas was lucky not to have been clubbed to death on the spot. Ata reacted strongly to this humiliating treatment of his wife. He forbade any of his people to attend the school or worship, and bluntly told Thomas he could leave Hihifo and go to another place if he wanted to. With fierce indignation Thomas (Journal, 18 April 1829) wrote:
An understanding of the Tongan customs and traditions would have given Thomas and his colleagues some measure of the patience and tolerance which they needed for the success of their work, but they did not have this. Worse still there was little desire to make any sincere effort to understand the culture of the people since it was regarded as heathen, therefore unChristian and to be destroyed. The half-hearted attempts to understand the customs of the people were more for personal security purposes than for their intrinsic or functional value to be exploited to the full for the purpose of winning the people to Christianity.
Like many other Tongan chiefs of his day, Ata wanted Europeans to live under him and to serve him but not as his masters or rival ‘chiefs’. Hence his resentment of what he regarded as Thomas’s attempts to make himself chief among his people. Again like many other Tongans, Ata and the people of Hihifo were more interested in the missionaries’ trade goods than their teachings. Their hopes of gaining material goods were frustrated by the attitudes of the missionaries on these matters. The missionaries expected the Tongans to look after their material needs, since they had left their own homes to come to Tonga to save the Tongans from spiritual and intellectual degradation. This outlook of the missionaries led them at times to what the Tongans must have regarded as unfair bargaining and even meanness.
On the missionaries’ request, Ata got his people to build a fence for them but when he ‘was told what we should give [for the job] he would not look at the things, but went away...’ Ata was greatly annoyed by the smallness of the payment. The missionaries used to buy six chickens for a plane iron, a pig for a hatchet (Thomas, Journal, 24 July 1826), or 180lb. of yams or more for a shilling. Apparently some of the chiefs resented this so much that the people were forbidden to bring anything to sell to Thomas. Thomas explained the reason for the veto: ‘this is through Tofooa the Chief’s brother ... He is displeased with us, and says we wanted to buy a large quantity of yams for a spade’ (Thomas, Calendar and Diary, 4 May 1827).
Failing to get the material rewards they had expected from the missionaries, the people, with the full knowledge of many of the chiefs and probably their blessings, reverted to robbing the missionaries of their goods, threatening to burn down the mission premises and even to kill them. The situation had become so frustrating that Thomas was forced to arm himself day and night. He wrote:
The missionaries were so disappointed by Ata’s hardened attitudes to Thomas’s work at Hihifo that Nathaniel Turner and John Thomas finally decided to interview Ata in July 1829 regarding the future of the mission work there, which had now been going for three years. Turner spoke to Ata about the purpose of their visit. He told Ata about Thomas’s disappointment at not being able to carry out the work which God had sent him to Tonga to do, because Ata would not allow the people to come to school or to attend worship. He told Ata that unless he lifted his ban on the people attending the mission Thomas had to go to some other place where he would be at liberty to teach the people. He then asked Ata to tell them freely his mind on the matter. Turner recorded:
Ata was a solid man, a great leader, and a true champion of the Tongan traditional ways of life. After weighing the pros and cons of the new religion, he unequivocally concluded that it was better for him to ‘end in the way he was in, it being the way his friends were in before him’. He was certainly a man who would have been a gain to any party, but the Wesleyan mission missed out. Soon, however, Mr and Mrs Thomas moved to Nuku’alofa, and Ata himself took the missionaries to their destination in his own canoe. He died unconverted in 1833, four years before the mission at Hihifo was reopened in 1837.