Category Archives: Pacific

On 30 January 1999, archaeologist Felicia Beardsley visited a meeting house on the southern tip of Yap, Micronesia, where she ate sea turtle. Her Micronesian Diary entries focus on food as much as archaeology. I like that.

Anoth is at the south end of the island, the south tip. It is a coastal village, and we had been invited to the open house held in honor of the completion of rebuilding their traditional pebaey, or meeting house. The pebaey is right on the coastal flat — well, the entire village is — and immediately on the shore’s edge (not more than 50 meters from the pebaey) is the faluw, the men’s house. The only thing left of the faluw, however, is its foundation. It is a coral foundation, which is gradually eroding into the sea. In effect, the faluw foundation is an archaeological site.

Actually, a very large number of traditional dwellings in Yap were turned into similar archaeological sites by Typhoon Sudal in April 2004. Many people are still living in tents.

In these villages, the pebaey and faluw are used, reused, and rebuilt over time. Their locations generally do not change, so the same structure (or rather foundation) supports several generations of superstructures, all of which follow the same construction plan, with variation only in the decorative elements such as the plaiting in the walls and so on. Both structures are six-sided, and the only difference between the two is that the faluw is closed-walled, and the pebaey is not. That is because the faluw is (or was) used as a dwelling place for young men, where they would learn the skills that would carry them through life, including (but not limited to) fishing, the manufacture of all the tools necessary for fishing, fighting, dancing, oral histories, and of course, sexual skills. Each faluw used to house several girls who were obtained (kidnapped, purchased) from other villages. By contrast, the pebaey is a meeting house, or community house. It did not have need for walls, as it was not a place for permanent dwelling….

Teresa and I were the only girls at the open house; I was told the community had made a conscious decision not to include the women of the community. The festivities included roasting a sea turtle, which I was obliged to try. It really isn’t that bad, and tastes quite good when you eat the meat with the fat. But, as one of the chiefs pointed out, it is not something I am accustomed to eat, so it was of course understandable when I handed what was left on my plate over to someone else.

One of the most valuable phrases any fieldworker or traveller needs to learn is how to say in the local language, “I’m not accustomed to that yet.”

Then he went on to describe the preparation of the turtle, step-by-step, including how its shell is opened when it is basically half-cooked. There are times, he said, when the heart is still beating at this point. This is when the meat and fat is distributed, and several of the organs are removed. After this, the blood of the turtle continues to cook in its shell; it is this cooked blood that this particular chief prefers. Many others at the site also told me they prefer the cooked turtle blood, and could hardly wait until it was done. This same chief has a son whom Teresa was obliged to watch throughout the course of the day. She did a good job, keeping them both out of trouble and out of harm’s way. I think she welcomed this “job” because it kept her occupied….

I also had an opportunity to chat with the chief. What I found interesting is that chiefs like him are raised as chiefs from the time they take their first steps, and that is what he is doing with his son too. He said that he has seen so many changes in the traditions of Yap. Today, he said (and he seemed a little concerned about it), there are people who aren’t chiefs but who want to be. So, sometimes, he said, he just steps back and says, go ahead. Then watches. He said they don’t know how to do it, and they get frustrated and give it up.

The caste system in Yap has driven many talented commoners–and outcastes–to seek their fortunes overseas, many in the U.S. military. (Yapese have served in Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Iraq.) But it also seems to have contributed to a healthier fiscal and cultural cautiousness than in some of the other Micronesian states.

I’ve only just discovered archaeologist Felicia Beardsley’s Micronesian Diary, an illustrated diary of her visits to various parts of Micronesia in 1998-99. Here are excerpts from what she has to say about a yam feast in Kitti Municipality on Pohnpei.

We are supposed to attend and document a traditional feast — the ritual presentation of the yam (and opening of yam season) to the Nahnmwarki [high chief] by one of the villages in Kitti Municipality. That should be interesting….

We arrived to find huge yams hanging from the rafters of the nas [ceremonial house], as well as lined up outside on large racks made especially for such things. In one location outside the nas, there are piles of kava plants (for sakau [= Samoan te kava]) and sugar cane. These were collected by the four sections of the village — sort of a competition. And just outside the nas, an um (earth oven) was well underway — the wood was burning, stones had been piled high and were beginning to be heated. Those stones in the middle of the pile looked as if they were already starting to glow red with heat….

Then, just in front of the um and nas, a line of pigs stretched out on banana leaves. The pigs are killed on-site. Apparently, each village section was also responsible for supplying a pig or pigs (their choice). Someone also laid out a carabao. I am told that in the ranking of animal offerings, dog is the highest ranked, then pigs. Carabao are extras, with no rank. This was the first carabao I had actually seen here, and it was dead. It was almost immediately cut up into little pieces, with a leg offering given to the Nahnmwarki. The pigs are thrown onto the top of the um to burn off the hair, then they are opened up, cleaned and thrown back onto the banana leaves splayed. They and the pieces of carabao are covered up to keep the flies and dogs off of them. There are plenty of dogs wandering around, trying to lick up the blood from these animals….

The food is distributed to everyone; then comes a presentation of fabric and sugar cane. Yams are called (by title) for the um and pigs are placed on the um. These are then presented to the Nahnmwarki. The pigs are cut up, with the pieces distributed to various title holders. Next, the carabao. (We were given a piece of carabao; I gave it to Rosenda. She has a bigger family; besides, I know Teresa [her daughter] would not eat any of it because she saw the animal killed.) …

Finally, the last event of the day: Sakau pounding. All the stones in the nas (there are supposed to be six) are prepared. They are set up on tires and/or coconut husks. The kava is prepared, and the pounding begins. It is quite rhythmic, and in sync. One wonders if there is someone directing the pace of pounding. The whole sound echoes throughout the nas. One stone is pounded by all women; and their companions are dancing and singing, whooping and hollering to the rhythm of the stones. Sakau is traditionally pounded by men, who work with their shirts off. So, when these women were in the process of preparing their stone, one of the men involved in the event told them they had to take their shirts off just like the men because that is the way it is done. They didn’t, and gave him such a scolding that he walked off and left them alone.

In July 1837, a ship sailed into Ngatik atoll near Pohnpei on a nefarious mission.

The ship was the trading cutter Lambton, out of Sydney, Australia, manned by the classic motley crew of runaways, villains, adventurers, and entrepreneurs–the sort who abounded in the European population of the Pacific in the early nineteenth century. Any of those words could describe the Lambton’s master, C. H. Hart. Hart had roamed the Western Pacific for years, making his way by a mix of fair trade and sly schemes. Hart traded Islanders beads and knives, guns and ammunition, tobacco, cloth, and rum, driving a hard bargain for the bêche-de-mer, pearl shell, and tortoiseshell that he loaded aboard the Lambton. Bêche-de-mer, sea cucumber, went to China for soup. The Chinese paid well for it, but it had to be boiled and cured in a foul, messy job. Collecting pearl shell, like processing bêche-de-mer, was labor intensive…. Tortoiseshell, from hawksbill turtles–that was the stuff. It was made into ladies’ combs and mirrors, decorated boxes, and knickknacks. The Victorian world, Far East and West, was wild for it, and hawksbill turtles were being decimated to fill the demand.

It took time and hard work to find the turtles, though they were easy enough to kill once you located them. But what Hart had, or thought he had, on the atoll called by its inhabitants Sapwuahfik (but by Hart “Ngatik,” and on navigational charts by a dozen other names) was a hoard of tortoiseshell without the trouble of work–except the work of taking it from the island’s people, who would, no doubt, object. They had objected when Hart’s crew first found the treasure trove of shell, more than a year earlier. Two of the Lambton’s men had gone inland and discovered a cache of turtle shell, but the Islanders would not sell and resisted theft. In fact, a group of men chased the sailors down to the beach, and the crew escaped by quick oar strokes. The Lambton returned to island trading and a trip to New South Wales, but Hart did not forget the shell, nor the close call he and his crew had experienced. Greed and revenge took root, and in Hart’s mind he marked Sapwuahfik for a return trip.

The Lambton sailed to the region again in mid-1836, arriving at Pohnpei Island in August, just after a group of whalers from the ship Falcon had been killed following an altercation with Pohnpei men. The Europeans in the area, Hart among the leaders, joined forces to take revenge, culminating in the murder of a Pohnpei nobleman. (By involving himself with these events, Hart made sure that his name went down on the list of persons to be investigated two years later by a British warship, HMS Larne, under Commander P. L. Blake. Blake was a thorough and principled investigator, cautious but relentless in his pursuit of evidence of criminal activity. Because of Blake we have a historical record of Hart’s crimes.)

After the Falcon incident, Hart went back to business, sailing between Guam, Manila, and Pohnpei. Then, on the last days of June or the first days of July 1837, he made ready for his return to Sapwuahfik–where, he said, he wished to “trade quietly” with the natives–by making cartridges and taking on extra hands from Pohnpei.

When he arrived at the atoll, Hart tried to land where he had landed before, but this time he was met with hostility. Sapwuahfik men beckoned them ashore, indicating their intentions with a display of their own weapons. The people of Sapwuahfik had known from divination when the ship would return; they had been watching, and when they saw it appear on the horizon, they prepared for war, readying clubs and slings.

Hart thought better of an immediate landing, taking the crew to spend the night on another islet of the atoll. The next day he loaded them into the ship’s boats for a straightforward assault. Despite the defenders’ preparations, the battle turned against them. In two days of fighting, every Sapwuahfik man but one was killed or fled by canoe. Though one woman was accidentally wounded, the invaders did not make targets of women and children.

Soon after the Lambton sailed from the atoll–which, now that the native voices were stilled, would be called Ngatik for more than a century–it returned to leave a group of Pohnpeians and a European in charge of what Hart saw as his conquered domain. The plan was to operate Ngatik as a business, producing tortoiseshell. They would bring in more settlers, marry the widows and girls of old Sapwuahfik, and see how much money they could make in this pretty place. So survivors and murderers began a curious interaction that would eventually produce a new population and a unique culture [and language]. Sapwuahfik’s history had come to an end. The story of Ngatik had just begun.

SOURCE: The Ngatik Massacre: History and Identity on a Micronesian Atoll, by Lin Poyer (Smithsonian, 1993), pp. 1-3