Raivavae's ceremonial paddles

Rurutu is not the kind of place you get to by accident. Our guests often have a specific reason for visiting. It is one of the perks of the job, I might not get to travel as much as my restless feet would really like to, but I do get to meet other travelers, and share their stories and quests. This week there was a Canadian visitor, a collector of Oceanian art, his motivation for visiting was a 19th century carved paddle that he had acquired at auction. I’m not sure he found what he was looking for, the distant past (pre-missionaries, i.e. early 19^th century) is hopelessly obscured by the dramatic changes experienced in the Austral Islands and Polynesia more generally. Introduced European disease killed at least nine out of every ten people living in the Australs between the 1820s and 1840s, Christianization did the rest. In Rurutu, missionary accounts suggest that there may have been as many as 6,000 inhabitants prior to European contact, at the height of the epidemics some 200 survived! Woodcarving simply died out, Rurutu 'forgot' the fine art, once much admired by early European observers. Those remaining were more concerned with survival, besides, ancient customs were frowned upon by the Protestant missionaries. 

We are left with just the tip of an iceberg, odd fragments from a lost culture - Raivavae's ceremonial paddles are an example. The first paddle was received by the Peabody Museum in 1812. In total there are somewhere near a thousand in collections worldwide. They were probably collected between 1812 and 1842 and seem to have been the specialty of woodcarvers in Raivavae. What is interesting is that a large number of them were procured outside of Raivavae, other items such as fly whisks and drums were also procured in Tahiti. Suggesting an important trade of Austral Islands carvings.

 

Why these exquisite objects were originally produced is unclear, though the repeated motifs of men and women suggest a link with ancestry and/or fertility. The paddles have been long-studied by Rhys Richards, a New Zealander, who also passed through our guesthouse several years ago now, whilst writing his book Austral Islands: Art, History and Art History published in 2012. We were and are still more focused on A'a here, who has a whole dedicated chapter, but it motivated me to read in more detail. Later paddles were carved specifically as trade objects, but the detailed workmanship and presence of paddles prior to regular trade leave no doubt that they were originally valued cultural objects, but whether for use in dance or religious ceremony, we may never know.

The pictures shown here are of a paddle up for auction in California recently. It's a fabulous piece that sold for US$17,500, a fair bit more than the sailors who traded for it must have paid (often exchanging such objects for metal objects, clothing or fabric).