Study Notes on the Polynesian Iconoclasm and Regional Religious Transformations

Definition and Scope of the Polynesian Iconoclasm

• Etymological Breakdown: The term iconoclasm is derived from two components:

  • Icon: A sacred image or statue.
  • Clasm: A violent break or disruption.
  • Definition: A violent break with the worship of sacred images. In the Polynesian context, this refers to the purposeful, public destruction of traditional religious idols across Eastern Polynesia during the $1810s$ to $1820s$.

• Geographical Focus: The movement primarily affected Eastern Polynesia, specifically highlighting:

  • The Society Islands: Tahiti, Moorea, Raiatea (the ritual center), Taha'a, Huahine, and Bora Bora.
  • The Austral Islands.
  • The Cook Islands: Rarotonga, Mangaia, Atiu, Mauke, Mitiaro, and Aitutaki.
  • The Hawaiian Islands.

Social Stratification and Kinship in Eastern Polynesia

• Ranking Criteria: Societies were defined by elaborate social ranking systems where individuals were placed higher or lower relative to others based on:

  • Age: Older individuals ranked higher than younger ones.
  • Sex: Males ranked higher than females.
  • Descent: Rank was determined by the proximity of descent from prominent ancestors.

• Social Strata in Tahiti: Tahiti represented one of the most highly stratified societies in Oceania, divided into three main divisions:

  • Arii: The chiefs.
  • Ra'atira: The lesser chiefs.
  • Manahine: The commoners.

• Complexity within Ranks: Within the Arii class, there were further distinctions such as the Arii NUI (great chiefs) and the Arii Iti (lesser chiefs). Similar sub-stratifications existed within the lesser chiefs and commoners.

• Kinship Structure: Populations were organized into localized kinship groups defined by descent and marriage. Arii Nui ruled over coalitions of these kinship groups, often referred to as tribal groups.

• Territorial Organization of Tahiti: The island of Tahiti was divided into $21$ territorial tribes and $7$ tribal coalitions. These coalitions were formed through conquest, marriage alliances, or diplomacy.

Structural Limitations on Chiefly Power

• Checks and Balances: Traditionally, no single chief could dominate the entire society. If one chief became too powerful, other chiefs would rally against him to maintain a shifting balance of power.

• Dependency on Internal Resources: A chief’s ambition was limited by their dependency on their kinship group's resources. Embarking on military adventures required the voluntary contribution of resources from the kin. If a chief exhausted these resources, the people might turn against them.

Mana and the Traditional Religious Order

• Chiefs as Intermediaries: Arii were seen as bridges between the common people and the gods.

• God Images: Various deities were represented by wooden idols wrapped in tapa (white bark cloth) and decorated with red feathers.

• The Ritual Calendar:

  • Matarii Raro: Roughly occurring in May or June, marked by the Pleiades constellation dipping below the evening horizon.
  • Pa'iatua Rite: A ritual conducted during this season where god images were unwrapped and re-wrapped with new material to renew their sacred power.
  • Red Feathers: Old red feathers from the idols were distributed to chiefs to signify and renew their mana (power and authority).

• Religious Hierarchy: Raiatea was considered the ritual center of the region because it was the home of the original Taputapuatia temple dedicated to Oro, the god of war. An old chant describes Tahiti and Moorea as "fish broken away from Raiatea."

• Social Taboos (Tapu): The political order was maintained through strict religious taboos:

  • Certain foods (e.g., turtle and shark) were reserved exclusively for gods and chiefs.
  • Commoners were forbidden from eating with chiefs.
  • Women were forbidden from eating with men because men were considered closer to the gods.
  • Transgression of these taboos was often punishable by death.

The Arrival of Europeans and Pomare’s Rise

• External Resources: The arrival of Europeans in the $1770s$ provided new resources that chiefs could use to bypass traditional limitations on power. These included guns, trade goods, new knowledge, and unique skills.

• Matavai Bay: Chief Pomare controlled this safe deep-water anchorage, giving him a monopoly over European trade. He exchanged pigs for guns to boost his military standing.

• The Failure of the Oro Strategy: In $1810$, Pomare attempted to install a duplicate Oro image from Raiatea to gain spiritual dominance over rivals like Opufara of Papara, but the strategy failed.

• The Transition to the Jehovah Strategy: Around $1812$, Pomare began a series of acts designed to break traditional ritual ties. Specifically, he cooked a turtle at his own house and ate it alone—refusing to offer any portion to the temple—signaling a rehearsal for the coming iconoclasm.

The Progression of the Iconoclasm

• Missionary Alliance: Missionaries like Henry Nott supported Pomare's ambitions for political supremacy, believing his conversion would facilitate the mass conversion of Tahitians.

• The Bure Atua: Following Pomare's flight to Moorea in $1808$ and his declaration of allegiance to Jehovah in July $1812$, a group of professed worshippers known as the Bure Atua (God-praying people) formed. By $1815$, the group included approximately $400$ members, including high priests and chiefs.

• The Act of Pati'i: In February $1815$, the head priest Pati'i publicly renounced the old religion and committed his god image to the flames in Moorea. While missionary accounts initially described this as a brief, matter-of-fact event, later accounts by writers like William Ellis ($1834$) and London deputations ($1831$) dramatized the event into a mass burning with crowds gasping in horror.

• The Battle of Feipi ($1815$): Pomare and his allies from the Leeward Islands defeated his rival Opufara. Following the victory, Pomare destroyed Opufara's Oro image, stripped it of its coverings, and used the desecrated idol as a kitchen post for hanging food baskets.

• The Logic of Destruction: The iconoclasm was not just destruction but a deliberate inversion of the existing ritual calendar. Pomare's tour of Moorea happened during the Matarii Raro season, ensuring he desecrated the red feathers exactly when they should have been redistributed to renew tribal hierarchies.

Comparative Regional Examples: Tuvalu and Tonga

• Tuvalu and Church Formation: In Tuvalu, the conversion process was administrative rather than performative. In $1861$, a Cook Islands deacon named Alakana was blown off course to Nukulaelae and began teaching. Formal "church formation" led by Reverend Whitmee in $1870$ involved the keeping of record books (births, deaths, marriages), which functioned as a form of "colonial governmentality" even before the official British protectorate in $1892$.

• Tonga and Internal Conquest: King George Tupou I of Tonga established national unity through violent internal Christian conquest. He tested traditional deities by destroying a sacred vessel and striking down a priestess possessed by the goddess Hai Hai Tahi. This was a masculinization of the cosmology, replacing the gender-flexible deity Hikule'o with a heteropatriarchal system that still impacts Tongan land law today.

Contemporary Iconoclasm: The Kava Movement in Fiji

• Traditional Significance of Kava: Kava ($Piper\,methysticum$) is a plant and drink used for over a thousand years for medicinal and ceremonial purposes. It is associated with mana and ancestral gods.

• Diabolization of Culture: Anthropologist Birgit Meyer coined this term to describe the process where Pentecostal and charismatic Christian movements (which have grown to roughly $580,000,000$ adherents globally since the $1980s$) recast traditional practices as demonic or anti-Christian.

• The New Methodist Church in Fiji: Led by Pastor Atu Vulaono, this movement preaches against kava as "the devil’s liquid" and links it to ancestral spirits like the snake god Degei. Ministers claim kava causes laziness and infidelity.

• Destruction of Utensils: Modern iconoclasm in Fiji involves the destruction of kumete or tanoa (large bowls carved from $150$-year-old vesi hardwood) and bilo ipu (coconut shell cups). Villagers are told that destroying these items will break a curse and bring Western-style development (apartments, air conditioning, office blocks).

Critical Discussion and Questions

• Question: Given built-in checks on chiefly power, what would a chief need to dominate the whole island?

  • Student Ideas: Alliances, special skills to increase mana, slow manipulation/deception, ruling through fear, or acquiring resources from an external source (like Europeans).

• Question: Why might missionary writers have embellished the story of Pati'i?

  • Discussion: To glorify their own actions, create a "white savior" narrative, feed into stereotypes of "savages" needing salvation, and secure donations/funding from audiences back home in the UK.

• Question: Why was communal eating an effective marker of change?

  • Discussion: It directly violated daily habits tied to core ontologies. By making the invisible belief system visible and tangible through the act of eating—breaking gender and status hierarchies—it signaled a total collapse of the old order.

• Question: Is the Tahitian iconoclasm indigenous political strategy or colonial governmentality?

  • Discussion: It is likely both. It began as a political strategy by chiefs like Pomare to centralize power but was reinforced by the administrative and ideological structures of the missionaries.

Theoretical Frameworks for Next Week

• Radical Rupture (Discontinuity): Represented by the Polynesian Iconoclasm and Tongan Crusade, where the past is viewed as a dark era to be broken from.
• Quiet Fusion (Continuity): Represented by the Asmat (or Aksutman) of Papua New Guinea, who conflated ancestral figures (the Daha plan) with Jesus, claiming they had effectively "always been Christian."
• Diabolization: When old gods are not destroyed but go underground or are recast as active, dangerous demonic forces.