121 FIG. 5 (facing page top): “South Seas Idols.” From Juvenile Missionary Magazine, 1860. SOAS CWML G455. Many of the idols are rendered so accurately that they are recognizable. Most survive to this day in the LMS collection in the British Museum. Temeharo may be the long feathered object visible on the right on the top left frame. FIG. 6 (facing page bottom): “Destruction of Idols at Otaheite; pulling down a Pagan Altar, and Building a Christian Church.” From Missionary Sketches 6, July 1819. At fi rst, the missionaries were intent on burning the religious temples (marae) and the idols, as palpable proof of the abolition of idolatry. This drama is vividly illustrated here. It was some years later, beginning with Pomare II’s request, that the missionaries changed their tune and began to spare the idols from the fl ames and instead send them to England. FIG. 7 (left): Closeup of Temeharo from the cover of Missionary Sketches 3 (see fi g. 4). FIG. 8 (right): Temeharo (Pomare I’s own god). Tahiti. Before 1800. Wood core, woven sennit wrapping, remnants of large feathers. British Museum LMS Oc1981,Q.1552. Photo: Brian Carlson. served as the fi rst “trophies of Christianity”—the material proof, the “ocular demonstration” of the success of the South Seas Mission over heathen depravity. The museum was described by the fi rst LMS historian, John Campbell, as “an awful, yet glorious place.”6 The idol exhibits at the Missionary Museum proved popular. The LMS directors recognized that the museum “tends to promote amongst the numerous persons who visit it … a zeal for the Missionary cause” and welcomed the receipt of more idols “more welcome than the spoils of the Acropolis.” Thanks to the enthusiasm engendered by Pomare II’s offering of Temeharo and his other idols to the “people of Europe,” the missionaries quickly changed their tune from immolation to preservation. By 1820, their instructions to their Polynesian “teachers” read, “if you obtain idols, burn some (but not the best).” Temeharo and his companions remained on display in the Missionary Museum, which moved three times, until at least 1875. In 1890, the museum’s collection was placed on loan to the British Museum, and in 1910 it was purchased by that institution for £1,000, largely due to the efforts of keepers Augustus Franks and his eventual successor, Charles Hercules Read. Under the care of generations of British Museum keepers, Temeharo and most of the rest of the Tahitian idols lay hidden in storage, almost certainly due to the same aesthetic baffl ement expressed by the fi rst Europeans who encountered them. This situation continued until the summer of 2015, when Temeharo was featured in the exhibition Missionaries and Idols in Polynesia at the Brunei Gallery of SOAS, University of London.7 There, Temeharo was at once the least conspicuous and the most signifi cant object in the exhibition. NOTES 1. William Ellis. 1829. Polynesian Researches During a Residence of Nearly Six Years in the South Sea Islands, London: Fisher, Son & Jackson, vol. 2, p. 203. 2. John Cawte Beaglehole. 1963 (2nd edition). The Endeavour Journal of Joseph Banks, Sydney: Trustees of the Public Library of New South Wales in association with Angus and Robertson, vol. 1, p. 318. 3. John Cawte Beaglehole. 1967–68. he Journals of Captain James Cook on His Voyages of Discovery, Cambridge: Published for the Hakluyt Society at the University Press, vol. 3(1), p. 203. A fi d is a tapered wooden spike used in working rope and canvas on ships. 4. Anon., Missionary Sketches. October 1818. 5. Ibid. 6. John Campbell (ed.). 1843. The Farewell Services of Robert Moffat, in Edinburgh, Manchester, and London. London: John Snow, p. 133. 7. David Shaw King. 2015. Missionaries and Idols in Polynesia (Exhibition catalog), San Francisco: Beak Press, p. 74. FIG. 9 (below): Detail of a page from an undated edition of the catalog for the LMS Missionary Museum at its location on Blomfi eld Street, Finsbury, London. Catalog of the Missionary Museum, London: London Missionary Society, after 1841. This description of Temeharo additionally describes him as “the protector of Mateo.” It is noteworthy that Temeharo is number one in the LMS museum catalog.
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