The Deep Sea Canoe:: The Story of Third World Missionaries in the South Pacific

Preface:

The Deep-Sea Canoe

THE DEEP-SEA CANOE is a symbol from the South Pacific World. A century and a half ago, Fijian and Tongan deep-sea canoes plied from island to island with trade, warriors and tribute. More often than not their narratives were woven into the cultural configuration of cannibalism and war. These included double canoes (drua), sometimes called sacred canoes because war and cannibalism were religiously institutionalized. Some of these were longer than Captain Cook’s Endeavour. There were other deep-sea craft - the tabilai and the camakau - which may still be found in the outer islands today.

In the first half of the 19th Century a dramatic change took place. The use of the deep-sea canoe steadily shifted from the business of war and cannibalism to the transport of missionaries from one island group to another. These men were Tahitians, Tongans and Fijians. They spread the Gospel message beyond their own reefs right across the Pacific. They made phenomenal voyages between groups hundreds of miles apart, with remarkable skill in navigation. Joeli Bulu, Joni Havea, Juliasa Naulivou, Sailasa Faone, Wesele Lagi and Jeremaia Latu, all Tongan missionaries to Fiji before 1840, sailed over that 500 miles by deep-sea canoe.

Some of the British missionaries used this form of navigation. Thomas Williams in particular, used a canoe named Kurabui for his inter-insular visitation in the following decade. The canoe became a symbol for missionary expansion. In Fiji we are talking of a deep-sea canoe - a drua, a camakau or a tabilai, not a light-draught canoe without a proper deck, that is poled to and fro in the rivers and within the reefs (takia). True, many town Fijians who have been educated for the urban rather than the nautical life, and some inland islanders, call any canoe a takia. But the whole point of this quite indigenous concept is that the missionary symbol is a deep-sea canoe. There is to be no enclosure of their Church within the reefs. The island churches found themselves compelled to reach out beyond the reefs, and that could not be done in a light-draught canoe. In my years in Kadavu I often did my own missionary itineration in a deep-sea canoe, and many times in bad weather have I been close to disaster that I am fully aware of the significance of the deep-sea descriptor.

There is a record of Joeli Bulu borrowing a large deep-sea canoe, named Kinikinilau, from Ratu Cakobau, in 1869, to visit the island of Nairai. They ran into a hurricane and blinding rain. The canoe rolled and plunged so violently that her fastenings were endangered, and the sailyard was jerked from its place on the bow and fell into the sea. They tugged and strained until they got it in its place again, but many of the company having given up hope, they had to lower the sail and let the storm carry them by its own force, without a sail. They lashed the sail to the deck, and Stephen, a Lasakauan, called the company to prayer, leading first himself and then asking Joeli to follow.

No sooner had the prayer ended than the storm subsided not growing weaker, and ceasing gradually, but suddenly, in a moment. And there was a calm. [I quote Joeli’s actual words]. They began to secure their parted fastenings and headed for an island that had appeared in their course, and skulled for land. As they did so the storm began again and they hoisted the sail. The wind grew stronger and stronger. A cable parted and they lost an anchor, but they were able to enter the passage through the reef, and with some difficulty managed to beach the canoe; by which time the hurricane was blowing full force again from the opposite direction. Although many trees and houses fell, they were able to sing praises to God for his wonderful goodness as Joeli put it. Anyone who is familiar with the circular pattern of this kind of Fijian weather disturbance will know the canoe had crossed the eye of the hurricane.

These Fijian and Tongan missionaries could boast with Paul of suffering shipwreck, of spending days and nights in the deep, and journeying in the perils of the sea, of weariness, of cold and of watching (II Cor 11:25ff.). And as much as any western missionaries they were responsible for the spread of the Church across the South Pacific.

Seventeen years of deliberate indigenizing phased out the old colonial type of mission in Fiji. This transitional period terminated in 1964 with the inauguration of the now completely autonomous Conference. One of the rituals of the public festivities was the presentation of a model deep-sea canoe by the highest Chiefs of the land to the Church, as a symbolic reminder of their missionary commission. The first President of the Conference was installed into office by being clothed with the official presidential stole. This beautiful vestment carries two symbols - the symbol of the Faith, the cross, which is a reminder of the power of the Gospel, and a Fijian deep-sea canoe, a cultural symbol of the commission to go forth with that Gospel beyond the reefs.

This little book is an attempt to recapture something of the missionary heritage of the island people themselves, and put it in a biblical frame of reference. It is not a documented history (although it could well have been so) but is rather a simply written account for the young Christians of the Islands today, so that they may know the history of how they came by grace to their present position in the Christian Faith.

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Mission Under Cod

Almighty God, who didst send Thy light on the heathen through Jesus Christ the true light; drive the dark out of our hearts with Thy Word and Thy Spirit; shine on our islands with the light of everlasting life, that they may know their sin, and may believe in Jesus the Saviour; that they may find love and peace, and fighting and heathen ways may pass away, that they may all come to Thee repenting and believing, following with all their hearts Thy rule; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Prayer of Bishop Patteson

from the Melanesian Brotherhood’s

Morning and Evening Prayers

We travelled along the coast of Malaita with two Melanesian Brothers. They left our company at a place from which a trail led inland into the mountains, where the people had not yet accepted Christ. These mountaineers were enemies of the saltwater people. They had trade relations, but their market was carried out between two rows of hostile warriors. Yet the Brotherhood felt the times were ripe. The mountain villages were coming to Christ, forming congregations and providing pastoral nurture. Then the Brothers would depart and move on deeper into the pagan region.

In the record of Christian missions down through the centuries we come across periods of remarkable vigour when the pioneering bands have penetrated new lands and planted Christian communities across the countryside. It was like this in the 1st Century, as has been recorded in the Acts of the Apostles. It was the same in the narrative of how the Gospel spread in Britain, and in Ireland and in Germany. However much legend has come to surround the records of Augustine, Patrick and Boniface, one thing we know - those medieval movements from animism to Christianity were the most dramatic and significant changes of faith position those people had known, and took possession of communities of people whole. They changed the course of history.

In this little book I shall narrate some of the more recent (and still documentable) events of the Christian movement in the Central South Pacific, bringing the focus not on the western missionary figures (whose presence admittedly was quite real, nevertheless), but on the South Pacific islanders themselves, in as much as they were engaged in the missionary penetration, the uprooting of animism, the substitution of Christianity and the planting of the Church. We will see how the island people themselves, once they discovered the power of the Gospel were enabled to bear persecution, to triumph in encounter with the powers of their past, and became so obsessed with the evangel that they could not rest until they had claimed their homelands for Christ. This is, therefore, a book about Third World missionaries during the 19th Century.

The modern period of Protestant missions may be said to have begun in the last decade of the 18th Century with the activities of William Carey and (as far as the Pacific was concerned) with the formation of the London Missionary Society (LMS), whose missionaries penetrated Tahiti and the surrounding islands. From the island converts of this mission, and particularly from Raiatea, came a band of men who went forth with apostolic zeal to win the Polynesian islands to the west for Christ.

Another similar British body to the LMS was the Wesleyan Missionary Society (WMS) whose missionaries operated in Tonga, Fiji and New Zealand. The two missions met in Samoa. The triumph of the Gospel in Tonga led to the missionary penetration of Fiji; and eventually Fijians and Tongans (some Samoans and Rotumans) carried the Gospel further westwards to New Britain and New Ireland, and subsequently to Papua, the Solomon Islands and North Australia. The Tahitian missionaries also penetrated Melanesia. Many of these Third World missionaries were ‘faithful unto death’ and their graves are found in foreign soil of islands that are now Christian.

The origins of these indigenous missionary movements must be traced back theologically to the Evangelical Revival in Britain. Sometime later the Churches which emerged through this movement received the missionary commission. The Wesleyan movement and that of Whitefield ultimately gave us the WMS and LMS, and from the evangelical party in the Church of England we had the Church Missionary Society (CMS) which also operated with the Maoris in New Zealand. When you pick up a hymnbook and sing the compositions of Wesley, Watts and Top-lady, for example, you are drawing from the three wings of this movement, the effects of which reached the Pacific between 1796 and the mid-19th Century. It is this period and penetration which is considered in this book - more particularly the role of the islander himself in it. The South Pacific island convert found the theology of John Wesley quite congenial, and no historian can escape the evidence that the experiences of the Evangelical Revival were truly echoed in the South Pacific Islands.

Times were innovative in Britain. The country was passing through a period of major social change, like Suva and Port Moresby today. There were new kinds of roads and transport, new dimensions in engineering, and everywhere there was experiment. More money was available for investment and Christain people were ready to use this in the Lord’s work. They supported the new missionary societies and also the horizontal structures like the British and Foreign Bible Society (BFBS) and Religious Tract Society (RTS) which they considered part of their missionary thrust in the world. Education also was developing and experimental.

It was also a time of new discoveries outside of England because of navigation. Sailors explored new oceans, and returned home with tales of people who had strange customs and spoke unknown languages. Captain Cook had explored the Pacific. His reports were printed in England. Carey read them and asked the question - We have found new seas and new races of people who have never heard of Christ: What does this mean to Christian people to whom God has committed the Gospel in our day? What does the Great Commission mean for the English evangelicals in 1792? It was out of this question that the notion of modern missionary responsibility arose in Britain and that British missionaries found themselves sent after the apostolic pattern to the South Pacific by the home churches which supported the LMS, WMS and CMS. The distribution of these activities over the South Pacific may be seen on the accompanying map.

Fig. 2 Showing the Diffusion of the W.M.S. and L.M.S. People Movements Across the South Pacific Ocean

That is how the British missionaries came to be in the Pacific: but this is not a book about them so much as about their South Pacific co-workers. The task of collecting the material for this narrative was not an easy one. Nearly all the books about Pacific missions were printed in England, Australia or America, for Christian readers of those countries. They were the people who sent the missionaries, forwarded medical supplies and educational materials, built the missionary ship, paid for the printing of Bibles in the vernacular languages and so on. They wanted to know how their missionaries were getting on, so it was expected that books would focus on these men and women rather than on their South Pacific coworkers. So very little has been written about the island evangelists, and their tremendously important role is often overlooked. Neither is it easy to recapture these narratives of their exploits today. This is a tragedy because much of the pioneering missionary thrust was actually the work of islanders, not of westerners.

However, when one reads the letters written by the early western missionaries to friends of the family, their notebooks and diaries, and their reports in the church records, one will discover that they wrote much about the good work of their island colleagues. One will also be impressed by the dependence of the western missionary on his faithful island offsider. This is especially so of those who worked with Fijians and Tongans. (I am sure I would find the same in other places if I had access to the records.) I have given a good many years of my life looking for these letters and diaries, and many of the episodes in this little book have come from such unprinted documents. Therefore, one reason for my writing this present account is to set the record straight and stress an important point not sufficiently emphasized in the more promotional histories of mission. The Christian mission in the South Pacific down to the colonial period was more an indigenous than a foreign mission.

Another thing I want to say is that I myself have a great debt to my Fijian colleagues in a later generation from that of the pioneers. It is true that I gave myself wholly to the Fijian people, but from them I received far more. I found them still very like the Old Testament people - living communally in a subsistance society, with their life of agricultural activity interwoven with their church experiences. The Old Testament became a new world to me after experiencing life lived close to the soil with these people. Furthermore, I learned much of the communal life. I discovered how western an individualist I was, and koinonia became a new reality. I also discovered the dynamic of what I shall call in this book power encounter - how a Christian faces a force of evil in the power and authority of Christ - and here the Scriptures again become more meaningful.

This meant a whole reorientation of my own religious life, without which this little book could not have been written. History, anthropology and theology are interwoven in its pages. Life is like that. It really cannot be compartmentalized.

The history might have been put together in the formal style of a classical history, and documented; but as I am writing for an island audience that their heritage be not forgotten I have tried to be not over academic. For the same reason I want it to be culturally relevant - I try to forget my personal ethnic background and write in the style of my own cross-cultural experiences in the islands. Theological it certainly is, because it was a cross-cultural application of a biblical commission (Mt 28:18-20) that inspired the mission to the South Pacific. My hope is that the three ingredients will be interwoven in each chapter, and that a younger generation of South Pacific islanders, to whom I have dedicated this book, will discover a biblical theology of mission which was actually worked out historically in their own islands, and thereby discover its dynamic for themselves.

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The title I have given this chapter is Mission Under God. The phrase reminds us that we are not recording merely human history, we are not just dependent on our own skills.