Puka-Puka

Item

Cartographic Name
Puka-Puka
Identifier
SITE-PKPK
Contained in place
Puka-Puka
category
Blackbirded Island
temporalCoverage
1863-1900s
sourceOrganization
Queensland Polynesian Labourers Act (1868)
Pacific Islanders protection Act 1872 & 1875 (UK)
text
"Huneree, t’ousan’ee, milionee milee!
Hippo! HIppo! Hooray!
Go t’hell t’ Call-ay-oh!
It was a slaver chantey, for in the old days the blackbirders used to capture South Sea Islanders to dig guano in the Chincha islands [off the coast of Peru]. Two hundred were stolen from Puka-Puka." Pacific Modernist Fiction. Frisbie, Florence Ngatokura. Miss Ulysses. Macmillan, 1948, p.11.
"He took William into the Cabin and gave him rum. The he gave him a beautiful suit of black church clothes,a pair of boots, a silk hat, a handkerchief, and a fancy shirt with a stiff collar and a red necktie. And he told, Williams, by talking with his hands, to bring all the Puka-Puans aboard his ship … Williams said okay, climbed into the captain’s boat, and was rowed ashore. But as soon as the boat touched the beach he jumped out, waved his arms around, grabbed his silk hat so he wouldn’t lose it, and yelled ‘Run for your lives! Blackbirders!" Pacific Modernist Fiction. Frisbie, Florence Ngatokura. Miss Ulysses. Macmillan, 1948, p.31.
"I gaze into the fires of Hell, / Where sharks, rats, and heathens / Are writhing in the flames" Journalistic Essay . Frisbie, Robert Dean. The Book of Puka-Puka. The Century Co., 1929, p.35.
"When that was all done, I stood up in the middle of that great gathering and fearlessly spoke up, saying, ‘Listen now to me, people of Pukapuka. Jehovah is the only God, Jehovah alone. Obey only him, and forsake all the countless gods that you are worshipping. People of Pukapuka, let us belong to Jehovah now and forever’" Vernacular Account. Manuae, Luka. “The Arrival of the Word of God to Pukapuka.” The Journal of Pacific History, 1869, p.501.
"Danger Island, to give the place its English name, lies seven hundred and twenty miles northwest of Rarotonga, whence a supply schooner might arrive once or twice a year to carry away the copra crop, the only source of income for the six hundred people on the atoll" Journalistic Essay . Frisbie, Robert Dean. The Book of Puka-Puka. The Century Co., 1929, p.11.
Source
Cook Islands Library and Museum Society (Rarotonga)
National Library of New Zealand
Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa
London Missionary Society Archives (SOAS, UK)
Frisbie, Robert Dean. The Book of Puka-Puka (1929)
Beaglehole, Ernest & Pearl. Ethnology of Pukapuka (1938)
Borofsky, Robert & Howard, Alan. Making History: Pukapukan and Anthropological Constructions of Knowledge (1987)
Item sets
Carceral Sites