Since at least the eighteenth century, European explorers and scholars have been reporting their ‘discoveries’ in the Pacific Islands. Descriptions of very different ways of organising social relations had a profound influence on European intellectuals, broadening their sense of social, political, cultural and economic possibilities. They assumed that the discovery of Europeans had equally profound effects among the Pacific Islanders who were simultaneously ‘discovering’ new ways of living and thinking. This chapter examines a sample of early cross-cultural encounters, from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries, to try to grasp the ways in which some Islanders understood both the events and their implications for their own lives and ideas.

DISCOVERING?

Samoans and Tongans conceived of their islands as a complete universe of sea and lands, contained by the dome of the sky and divided into invisible layers containing the living places of gods. Below the sea was the realm of Pulotu, entered by the spirits of the aristocratic dead through an entrance under the sea, off the westernmost shore of the islands. They called the strangers papalagi, meaning ‘sky bursters’: when the strange ships sailed across the horizon, their utter unfamiliarity caused Islanders to suppose that they must have burst through the dome of heaven. The modern equivalent of Islanders discovering outsiders would be encounters with extra-terrestrials. The explorers’ ships, appearance, clothing and manners suggested that they had come from another world.