The Call of the South by Louis Becke — Read

For the Samoans I have always had a great admiration and affection. Practically I began my island career in Samoa. More than a score of years before Robert Louis Stevenson went to die on the verdured slopes of Vailima Mountain, where he now rests, I was gaining my living by running a small trading cutter between the beautiful islands of Upolu, Savai'i, and Tutuila, and the people ever had my strong sympathies in their struggle against Germany for independence. Even so far back as 1865, German agents were at work throughout the group, sowing the seeds of discord, encouraging the chiefs of King Malietoa to rebel, so that they could set up a German puppet in his place. And unfortunately they have succeeded only too well, and Samoa, with the exception of the Island of Tutuila, is now German territory. But it is as well, for the people are kindly treated by their new masters.

The Samoans were always a warlike race. When not unitedly repelling invasion by the all-conquering Tongans who sent fleet after fleet to subjugate the country, they were warring among themselves upon various pretexts -- successions to chiefly titles, land disputes, abuse of neutral territory, and often upon the most trivial pretexts. In my own time I witnessed a sanguinary naval encounter between the people of the island of Manono, and a war-party of ten great canoes from the district of Lepa on the island of Upolu. I saw sixteen decapitated heads brought on shore, and personally attended many of the wounded. And all this occurred through the Lepa people having at a dance in their village sung a song in which a satirical allusion was made to the Manono people having once been reduced to eating shell-fish. The result was an immediate challenge from Manono, and in all nearly one hundred men lost their lives, villages were burnt, canoes destroyed, and thousands of coco-nut and bread-fruit trees cut down and plantations ruined.