Reading into the past : a historiography of Mangaia in the Cook Islands

Abstract

This thesis applies techniques of textual analysis to selected Mangaian historical narratives. By viewing the texts as literary constructions an historian is able to gain a better perspective of the way the narrations were structured and clothed with particular ethnographic and historical textures. The introduction discusses the principal collectors and the ways they represented their work. The first part establishes the bases upon which the Mangaian past was told. Despite the transformations experienced since the arrival of the missions a significant degree of continuity can still be found in the roles of traditional experts, in particular of women, and in the ways traditions are transmitted. The second part explores a selection of Mangaian texts. Chapters four and five delve into the extant versions of a Mangaian origin myth and their categories of the other world—the supernatural. The roles of the ancestral figures and the supernatural beings emphasise the important place occupied by mythological texts in the telling of Mangaia’s past. The physical, cultural and spiritual mapping of Mangaia is established through the conflicts and partial resolutions achieved between the supernatural agencies and the island’s founding ancestor. Chapter six explores the connections between these categories of the otherworld and historically recorded visits to the island. The fearful attitude these visitors provoked and the attempts made by Mangaians to control the encounters reflect the ways Mangaians viewed the world. Chapters seven to twelve examine texts which elucidate the roles performed by the principal actors in Mangaian society. The conversion and prophecy dreams reported by the priestly spiritual ruler emphasise the shamanic dimension of the Mangaian priesthood. The supreme political or temporal rulership is discussed; in particular, the contested nature of the office; the periodic appearance of a subsidiary rulership; and the manner of succession to temporal rule. The narratives emphasise the complementarity envisaged between the spiritual and temporal rulers. Their cooperative duality was understood as ensuring the island’s peace and prosperity. Conversely, the island suffered when these rulers opposed each other. However, the hierarchical appearance of Mangaian society structured around these complementary rulerships was always leavened by crosscutting personal, family, tribal or religious loyalties which acted to reintegrate society after political conflicts. Reading into the many texted past of Mangaia not only emphasises the richness and diversity of its ethnographic record but enables an historian to check the interested nature of particular texts and their narrators. This approach may be applied to any historical enterprise.

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