hitian converts. Thanks to Pomare, the missionaries changed their tune and by 1820 their instructions to their converted Polynesian teachers read, “If you obtain 92 idols, burn some (but not the best).”7 No longer food for the fl ames, these idols were suddenly viewed as “trophies of Christianity, obtained in our bloodless victory.”8 Shipments of idols began to arrive in England in 1817, starting with ten of Pomare’s family gods. They were housed in the LMS Missionary Museum, which had opened on Old Jewry, near Cheapside. As Christianity spread to other islands, more idols arrived. The idol exhibits were popular, and the museum was featured in guidebooks and newspapers. A catalogue was published in 1826 and another about 1843. The museum was described by the fi rst LMS historian as “an awful, yet glorious place.”9 The Missionary Museum remained open at least until 1875. Augustus Franks, then keeper of the Department of British and Mediaeval Antiquities and Ethnography, acquired the LMS collection for the British Museum as a loan in 1890. Twenty years later, it was bought for £1,000 by Charles Hercules Read, his successor. Additional LMS objects were acquired directly by the missionaries and by a deputation of two outside reviewers of the LMS South Sea Missions, Daniel Tyerman and George Bennet, and have since found their way to a number of museums. Unlike the explorers, the missionaries settled down and stayed in Polynesia for decades or even their entire lifespans. They were the fi rst Europeans to learn Tahitian. This put them in a position to record a good deal about Polynesian culture. Some of them became good ethnographers. Although their aim was to Christianize the islanders and to eradicate the traditional religion along with its pagan idols, thanks to Pomare and Papeiha, the LMS ended up saving much of what they came 12,000 miles to destroy. No doubt due to bias against the missionary endeavor and its connection with colonialism, the LMS has remained an unpopular and largely neglected subject for more than 100 years. The majority of the objects the LMS sent back have received little or no attention, despite their cultural importance and aesthetic merits. To our knowledge, this is the fi rst exhibition that specifi cally addresses the LMS, and most of the objects included in it have not been on public display since the nineteenth century. FIG. 11 (above): George Baxter (1804–1867), The Massacre of the Lamented Missionary the Rev. J. Williams and Mr. Harris, 1841. “Oil picture.” LMS archives, SOAS. After seventeen successful years in Polynesia, Rev. John Williams ventured into Melanesia. He landed at Dillon’s Bay on the island of Erromango in the New Hebrides in November of 1839, where he was suddenly wounded with arrows and then clubbed to death. Evangelical Christians saw it as the fi rst martyrdom in the Pacifi c. Williams’ “murder” was depicted in this dramatic oil print by offi cial LMS artist George Baxter, who borrows heavily from a painting by William Hodges of Captain James Cook. The latter had almost met the same fate in exactly the same spot, seventy-fi ve years before Williams, but Cook’s crew had muskets. FIG. 12 (above): Museum of the English Missionary Society in London as depicted in a fold-out “peep show.“ Date and maker unknown. Private collection. The Missionary Museum opened in 1815. It housed the curiosities sent back by missionaries in Tahiti, India, China, and South Africa. At fi rst the displays were mostly natural history specimens, such as dried scorpions and a stuffed giraffe, but shipments of actual “idols” from Otaheite (Tahiti) started to arrive in 1817. These were the fi rst “trophies of Christianity,” the material proof, the “ocular demonstration,” of the success of the South Sea Mission. The collection was acquired by the British Museum as a loan in 1890, and then was purchased in 1910 for £1,000. It is the largest LMS Polynesian collection. ART on view
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