89 FIG. 4 (right): The fi rst volume of Minutes, Meeting of the Directors, London, September 22–24, 1795. SOAS CWM/LMS/Home/Board Minutes, Book 1. Initially called The Missionary Society, the name was amended in 1818 to The London Missionary Society. Volume 1 documents the fi rst meeting in which the society basics were set forth: the name, the object, the leadership (there were up to thirty-four directors), the membership, and so forth. FIG. 1 (left): A line from Rev. John Williams’ written instructions to the Raiatean teachers on the eve of their departure from Ra’iatea to Aitutaki. 1823 translation of 1821 original, written in Tahitian. LMS archives, SOAS. The fi rst missionaries were intent on burning the idols in order to demonstrate the triumph of Christianity, but thanks to Pomare II, the Christianized “king” of Tahiti, the stance of the missionaries abruptly changed from “And the idols he shall utterly abolish” (Isaiah 2:18) to “if you obtain idols burn some (but not the best).” and highly cultured. These explorers also described the loose moral values of the islanders, as well as their practice of infanticide, human sacrifi ce, and idolatry. All this caught the eye of the Evangelical Christian revival movement that was sweeping through Britain twenty years after Cook’s voyages. Several missionary groups had formed by then, and their aims were all the same: to bring the Good News of the Bible to every non-believer, “to illume a dark and sinful world.”1 The largest, most important, and successful of these was the LMS. Polynesia was seen as an Eden populated by highly civilized beings, but those beings reportedly were seriously fl awed and lived in a state of moral degradation. It was a perfect stage for correction and for conversion. Within a year after the founding of the LMS, in 1795, they bought and fi tted out a ship called the Duff, found FIG. 2 (far left): Janus fi gure at terminus of fl y whisk handle. Austral Islands, probably Rurutu. G. Bennet, Sheffi eld Museum, CUM Z5026B. Flywhisks were important symbols of prestige. Waved during oratory, they also served as instruments of insect control. In the Societies and Australs, fl ywhisks were also family gods. In the Cooks, fans took their place. The missionaries used the terms fan and fl ywhisk interchangeably. Handles were fashioned of bamboo, tropical bird ulnae, intricately carved whale tooth ivory, or wood. The whisk element was generally straight or helically formed sennit, dyed black in the mire of taro bogs, though it was sometimes composed of tufts of feathers. The bindings were often of sennit and braided human hair. FIG. 5 (left): A small (1½”) colophon that appears in William Carey’s An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens, 1792. SOAS CWML J.190. Carey’s was in effect the fi rst book to promulgate the Christian missionary endeavor. It provided a principal armature for the LMS and included a job description for missionaries. This colophon was not an offi cial emblem of the Evangelical Christian movement or of the LMS, but it encapsulates much of what Evangelicalism was about. The phrase “white to the harvest” appears often in missionary literature as a reference to the millions of lost souls ripe for receiving the word of the Christian God. Here, the scythes symbolize harvesting the heathen souls, themselves represented by the festoon of grain attached to the scythes. The hourglass in the center is probably a reference to millennialism, as Evangelicals believed that placing the word of God in everyone’s hands would hasten Jesus’ return. The circular snake (ouroboros) represents eternity. FIG. 3 (near left): Janus fi gure at terminus of fan handle. Central Cook Islands, perhaps Atiu. LMS 51. Ex BM LMS collection, R. Nash, G. Ortiz. Private collection. Fans were personal or family gods in the Cook Islands. Referred to as “sacred fans,” they are frequently mentioned on the list of objects “Sent to England,” after having been brought back to Ra’iatea by Papeiha following his successful two-year stint Christianizing Aitutaki. Fans were owned by people of high rank, and the fi rst European visitors to the Cook Islands (on Cook’s third voyage, 1777) mentioned chiefs on Atiu holding fans. Missionaries and Idols
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