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Pompallier, Colin and Propaganda

As soon as Colin had received the parcel of letters, he had a faithful copy made of Pompallier’s letter as asked and, on 10 November, he forwarded it to Cardinal Fransoni in Rome with a covering letter of his own.[1] He expresses his intention to send another eight or ten priests in 1839. He underlines Pompallier’s need for a small ship and thanks the cardinal for the faculties the last group of missionaries received in August, just before their departure.[2]


Quite casually, in between other considerations, Pompallier had written to Colin, if the Society has not got the manpower, why not ask for another solution in Rome? He evidently felt no longer bound by his commitment of two years earlier not to call in other missionaries.[3] In his covering letter of 10 November to Fransoni, Colin did not refer to this suggestion of Pompallier’s.


However, by the same occasion, on 21 May, Pompallier had also written to Fransoni himself and that letter expressed the need for more missionaries in the most vivid terms. Having mentioned that he had asked the Society of Mary for a good number of new missionaries, the bishop becomes specific and adds: ‘if Propaganda College in Rome could give my mission a few of those good men that it has in abundance, what benefit it would mean for the flock that would then, I trust, soon know Jesus Christ, their true shepherd.’ His move was evidently not as casual as the letter to Colin might suggest.


Pompallier also mentions a Mgr. Palotti, director of the Catholic Apostolate, whom he had befriended in Rome, and who had shown a great interest in the new mission, and suggests that a copy of the present letter might be forwarded to Palotti.[4]


Propaganda must have received the bishop’s letter at about the same time as Colin did, and without wasting any time (10 November), the secretary, Mgr. Ignazio Cadolini, wrote to Colin. With fine diplomatic ambiguity (he had not yet received the copy, and thus did not know that the bishop had mentioned the same thing to Colin as well) he tells Colin that Pompallier had urgently (le più vive premure) asked for ‘other workers’ (altri operari Evangelici), leaving it open whether ‘altri’ meant more or other, i.e. non-Marist missionaries. Less diplomatically the secretary writes: ‘Even though I am fully convinced that, with your characteristic zeal, you will do your utmost to respond to the desires of the good bishop, I consider it my duty to unite my requests to his, and that you will do everything possible to rush to the aid of the bishop new missionaries who await the rich harvest you mention yourself’.[5] Propaganda was not going to be rushed into another panicky decision, as it did under the influence of Fr. Caret the year before, but it surely looks as if Pompallier’s impatience made a better impression in Rome than Colin’s ponderous management.


The two letters, Colin to Propaganda and Propaganda to Colin, both of 10 November, crossed in the mail.

Valparaiso

While Propaganda in Rome, and Colin in Belley, looked at the future, the six new missionaries were sailing across the Atlantic and turned around Cape Horn into the Eastern Pacific. On 12 December 1838, after ‘three months and a day’, as Baty counted, the Basque sailed into the harbour of Valparaiso. A very fast voyage indeed. The Picpus Fathers somehow knew they would be on that particular ship[6] and two of them came out in a small boat to meet them.


Like the first group eighteen months earlier, the Marists were fraternally received, ‘as if we were of their own’. There was no mail waiting for them, nor did they expect it. They enjoyed the hospitality of the Picpus Fathers who refused to accept any remuneration. The Brothers gave a hand to the builders putting up a convent for the Sisters of the Sacred Hearts who had arrived in late August with Caret to join in the missionary work of the priests, first in Chile, later in Polynesia.[7]


The stories that the Marists had picked up from the Ecuadorian ambassador were confirmed when they saw the splendid work of their Picpus hosts among the local people: baptising children that the parents could not afford to have baptised by their own priests, confessing laity and priests alike, even running a language school. The only thing the Picpus Fathers could not do was bless marriages to help couples living in irregular situations. People were full of praise for the French priests. Baty exulted: ‘Poor America! May God preserve France, the glory of Christendom, the glory of the priesthood!’.[8]


Jean-Baptiste Épalle renewed his vows all by himself before the crib, during Christmas night. Colin had overlooked authorizing someone officially to receive the renewal of vows, but it did not worry Épalle too much: ‘I trust the Council of Trent will not mind’.[9]


On 12 January 1839 Baty wrote a first letter to Colin and a second one the 16th. Epalle and Petit joined in and the mail went with the Charles Adolph sailing on the 17th for Bordeaux. Fr. Colin had asked Baty to make copies of any letter and send them by another ship. Dutifully Baty sent a third letter on the 25th, mostly repeating what he had told in the earlier ones.[10]


The Marists were well received by the commander of the French naval station, Captain de Villeneuve, and by another French captain who happened to be in port. They went to visit them several times and did what they could to develop good relations with the navy officers. De Villeneuve showed a letter from Pompallier but it did not tell them much they did not already know from the bishop’s letter from New Zealand that Colin had forwarded just before their departure.


The missionaries could only confirm what Pompallier had found, namely that few ships went from Chile to New Zealand, and only in certain seasons. They agreed that communications between France and Oceania could in the future only go via Sydney. Although Caret would have brought the strange Roman decree with him that allowed the Picpus Fathers to extend their activities further into the Western Pacific[11], there is not the slightest hint of it in the letters from the Marists. As the situation had changed radically, the Picpus Fathers must have agreed among themselves not to bring up the subject.

Futuna[12]

Peter Chanel stayed about a month with Bataillon on Wallis[13] and returned to Futuna on 27 April 1838. Warfare was gradually abating (28-04) although there still were occasional threats of violence (30.04). The Futunans had evidently become used to the presence of Peter Chanel and Marie Nizier Delorme on their island. They were not the only Europeans. Thomas Boag lived mostly with the missionaries and there was an Englishman, Mr. Jones who had a small schooner and employed an English sailor, Georges. The schooner made occasional trips to Wallis, which allowed Bataillon and Chanel to exchange letters (30.08). It even went as far as Fiji (30.08). Sometimes other Europeans are mentioned without further information as to who they were (e.g. 24.06).


After the cyclone of February a new house had been built for the missionaries, but due to the fighting in March it took a long time to finish. In May they moved in, but it was not completed until late June (23.06). Chanel then asked and got permission to build a second house on the other side of the island, among the Singave people (13.08). Most of the time the missionaries got plenty of food from Niuliki, or other islanders, often the nicest fish, and the choices bits of pork (25.07).


Even when they still lived in a corner of Niuliki’s house, the two used to get up very early to say their prayers and celebrate Mass before people came in to chew the kava roots. Everyone apparently felt free to move in and out of the missionaries’ house at any time (13.07). On their walks over the island Chanel and Nizier often stayed the night in people’s houses. Chanel notes he sometimes had to listen to coarse or obscene stories, which means he understood more of the language than he admitted (31.07)!


He soon had a place built on the Singave side of the island to say Mass and when the first Mass was said in Poi, on the North coast, Niuliki told the people of the area to attend. He gave the good example and Chanel was edified by their respectful behaviour (06.05). They obviously understood that whatever the missionaries were doing somehow connected up with their own feelings for the sacred. The silence was broken only by a few crying babies whom Chanel called his choir (mes servant chantres 06-04). People loved to assist at ceremonies, listen to Chanel and Nizier singing, and gaze with admiration at the colourful pictures with which the little chapels were decorated. Seeing the missionaries make the sign of the cross, some imitated them. One woman took the initiative of décorating the picture of Our Lady with flowers (18.07).


The two missionaries had soon taken to the local kava culture. They took it first thing in the morning with the King or with the neighbours (11.06) and on every thinkable occasion, several times a day. Like the Futunans, they received and donated kava roots whenever custom demanded it (e.g. 22.06), and accepted an offering of kava in honour of their God (09.08). They often were present and enjoyed the dances, that could go on for a good part of the night (30.06;13.09).


Especially during the Southern winter, whaling ships frequently called or came in view. Every time they caused great excitement with people rushing to possible landing sites to sell food, fruit or pigs. Sometimes the two missionaries too bought things. Chanel shows his anger at the unfair trading that sometimes went on, sailors paying with worthless trinkets for valuable food, and obtaining girls for guns and powder. One girl that the sailors got onto their ship did not like their behaviour and jumped overboard (21.05). Chanel was frustrated at not knowing enough English or Futunan to tell them what he thought of it all. When Marie Nizier heard that the whaler John Adams of Nantucket was on the way to New Zealand, Chanel tried to send a letter or a message to Pompallier in case he was there (31.08), but nothing came of it.


Life on Futuna had its charms. After a trip with Jones’ schooner around the island Peter wrote with admiration of the beauty of Futuna and walking across the island he admired the carefully tended taro plantations (09.06). He enjoyed taking part in extended picnics on the uninhabited island Alofi, admiring the luxuriant vegetation, and looking at the remnants of earlier occupation. He enjoyed the plentiful fruits and foods as well as the crayfish, the crab and fish they caught (25.07). He tried his hand at catching eel, but dropped his keys in the process. Once the two lost count of the days and ate meat on a Friday (20.07).


Later in the year Jones came back with the news that a French warship had bombarded villages in Fiji in reprisal for the murder of a French captain. Chanel regretted the use of violence, but also considered it a useful lesson that would bear its fruit on all the islands. He hoped the ships would call at Futuna but they did not (12.12).[14]


The two missionaries quickly got into the habit of constantly giving presents, a custom at the heart of Oceanic cultures (24.11). Pieces of cloth were always welcome, and once he made Niuliki happy with a pair of underpants (30.60). Marie-Nizier was liked and sought for the many useful services he rendered. He regularly shaved the King and members of the royal family (21.06), being grumbled at when the King’s brother-in-law found the knife not sharp enough (21.07). He discovered how to turn nails into iron fish-hooks that were very popular (11.10; 04.11). His talent for tailoring came in very useful when he made a dress for the King’s granddaughter (08.08). The American James, who had managed to get himself a Futunan wife, brought her along for Nizier to cut her a dress, which he did (10.11).


They got into trouble when they broke a taboo by putting up a latrine behind their new house in Singave: a threat to the countless streamlets of drinking water running down the hills of Futuna (04.01.39). After all, what are beaches for!


Chanel expressed grief when people were sad and lived so close to them that he was liked and respected by many. One grandmother showed him her granddaughter and said she would not want her to marry anyone but a French nobleman, but the only French nobleman present told her kindly to teach her granddaughter to be a good girl (04.07).


Both were often called to visit the sick. Occasionally Chanel could secretly baptize a dying child or adult, but he was aware of the danger of being accused of sorcery and would not go to the funeral of a person he had baptized (22.08). Nizier too did baptisms (20. 01.39). Although there was interest among the people to know more of the lotu (i.e. the religion 28.08) and adults at times asked for instruction or baptism, it was clear that Niuliki would not hear of Futuna becoming Christian. Chanel bided his time (21.08; 16.09). The growing sympathy for Chanel did not stop someone from stealing a precious bottle of eau des Carmes (26.09).[15]


Their health held out reasonably well. Nizier badly hurt his arm, and Chanel, when climbing over the hill in the dark, hurt his back as he slipped three times ‘sur mon derrière’ (15.12). When the kava had been too strong his stomach could be upset, sometimes leading to serious vomiting (05.10). He had fever at times (06.05), but his sense of humour survived the miseries. Some nights an itch kept him from sleeping, but, ‘the local lice came and comforted me’ (06.12).

Wallis

As time went on, the Wallisian people, like the Futunans, became used to the presence on their island of the two white men, so very different from the familiar sorts of strangers they knew: visiting sailors, beachcombers and (in neighbouring Tonga) Methodist missionaries. The two were allowed to move around everywhere and attend traditional religious ceremonies (31.03). They certainly had gained the respect of many people, and often received gifts of food and the nicest bits of pork at feasts (30.03, 07.04). They were allowed to visit the sick, often even asked to come, and, given an opportunity, Bataillon would baptize a dying person (22.04).


Apart from occasional bouts of bad temper, Lavelua, the paramount chief (king) on Uvea (Wallis) liked the missionaries and invited them very often to his house for kava and meals. They sometimes went with him as he went visiting villages on the island. Lavelua let Niuliki on Futuna know that if he did not want the missionaries to remain, he could send them to Wallis where they would be welcome (20.04). Another chief threatened the Futunans he would take revenge if they dared harm their missionaries (25.04).


By the end of 1838 the whole of Wallis knew that these two papalangi (Europeans) had their own lotu, and that it was not the same as the one in Tonga. The people could see the religious ceremonies in the missionaries’ house and the two felt free to speak about it (08.04). Bataillon and Luzy refrained from saying they had come to convert Uvea to their lotu. The island was very divided on the issue. Most people felt secure in their old religion, and there was a deep distrust of any lotu papalangi, always associated with the Methodism in Tonga. Quite a few people, including a brother of Lavelua (12.04), were inclined to accept the lotu of Bataillon (17.04), and he secretly had a small band of catechumens who met on one of the twenty odd little islands on the ring of the vast lagoon that surrounds Wallis. Lavelua did not approve of it but mostly pretended not to know. Some people urged Bataillon to force the issue by putting the king for the choice, either to accept the lotu or to send him away (04.04). But all through 1838 the missionaries thought it better not to come out into the open.[16]

Cultures in contact

By the middle of 1838 our missionaries had lived for half a year in the midst of Polynesians. Remarkably, at about the same time, three of them felt they should start writing down what they had observed. Joseph-Xavier Luzy, on Wallis, started an eight-pages description of the island and its inhabitants in May 1838, he added a few pages in May 1839 and two more in May 1840, before he succeeded in mailing them.[17] Pierre Bataillon started a Notice sur l’île et la mission de Wallis (22 pages) in May 1838, he added a few pages in May 1839.[18] The two sets from Wallis are very much alike, as one would expect. Still, it shows an active involvement on the part of Brother Joseph in the study of the people. Servant did not put his impressions in a report, but the letters to his parents and his two friends in May (each of four pages)[19] and his letter to Colin in September (eight pages) contain all the material of a good report. Peter Chanel started a diary, or chronicle, on 12 November 1837, four days after arriving on the island. It soon got lost and on 26 December 1837 he started anew. Nearly every day he noted down the small events and impressions that make up the warp and woof of grass-roots history and ethnography.[20]


One would have expected all the symptoms of culture shock. The way they had reacted to the local people on the Canary Islands[21] and the romanticism that Mangareva aroused[22], prove they had no natural immunity. Still, on Wallis, on Futuna, and along the Hokianga River in New Zealand, all of them tell us of the Polynesian people in ways that are singularly free of the jolts that intensive involvement in those alien cultures could easily have caused. They see nothing ridiculous and nothing wrong in the people’s way of life. Nor do they romanticize.[23] They display a remarkable objectivity. Although they came with the prospect of having to convert barbarous cannibals, they are in no way judgmental and describe what they see with sympathy. They came full of the usual prejudices, but after a few months the prejudices have melted away in the face of reality.


Nizier and Chanel appreciate the local food (no cuisinophobia!) and the kava, they enjoy the music and the dances, admire the food gardens and the people’s fishing skills. The missionaries disregard Colin’s injunctions on moving about alone and Brother Nizier happily measures a local lady for a dress.


Bataillon wonders how the Polynesians ever managed to build their vast houses and canoes without the steel axes and knives they had only recently obtained. He too admires the gardening skills of the men, the variety of their food crops, the rotating use of the land, the courtesies of the kava ceremony. Luzy admires the huge ocean-faring canoes, and the courage with which the Wallisians take to the open ocean. Where Colin fears indecent nudity, Bataillon finds people modestly dressed in colourful tapa[24], and men and women bathing on separate spots, far apart. On Wallis he finds no sign of idolatry, but great respect for the taboos. He sees that some chiefs may have two or more wives, but that the common people are monogamous and that they are generally faithful to their spouses. He sees people sharing their food and notices their generosity to strangers: a well-ordered, hierarchical society where authority is respected, where men grow and prepare the food, women take care of the children and produce the tapa clothing.


In New Zealand, Servant admires the Maoris, strong and well-built men who work hard. He looks at them with respect from his house on the river, easily paddling their canoes even in rough weather: people of good and forceful character, with a sense of humour, who have fun imitating the whites.


What was it that went right? The Marist missionaries were defenceless, unarmed, entirely dependent on their Polynesian hosts. They displayed an incredible trust in the people’s goodwill. In comparison with the Methodists in New Zealand as well as in the islands, they were poor, and had very little to offer but a strange lotu. Unlike the visiting sailors, they respected the women and showed compassion with the suffering. The Polynesians responded with kindness. May we think that it was their very dependence that guarded the missionaries from the feelings of superiority which so easily lead to culture shock? And, may we think too, that it was precisely their trust that brought out the best in their hosts?

SUMMARY

Two years after the Marist missionary venture had started, it still consisted of different plays, enacted on different stages, with little connection between them. In fact the people involved in one place often knew nothing of what was happening elsewhere. Under the direction of Jean-Claude Colin two groups of missionaries had left for the South Pacific: the first one in December 1836, consisting of one bishop, four priests and three brothers; the second group in September 1838: three priests and three brothers.


As it should be, Colin was the best informed. He had received letters from Santa Cruz, Tenerife, Valparaiso, Chile, Tahiti, Sydney and New Zealand. The missionaries had done everything possible to keep him au courant and by the end of 1838 all except the last batch of letters (sent in September 1838) had in fact reached him. He now knew that the first group had in fact safely reached its destination.


Colin had sent money (8.700 francs) in May 1837, after receiving Pompallier’s letter from Tenerife, and mail in November 1837, after receiving the letters from Valparaiso and hearing of the death of Fr. Bret. He had entrusted another parcel of mail and a large sum of money (50.000 francs, not counting other gifts) to the second group in September 1838. By the end of 1838 neither the letters nor the money had reached the missionaries.


When the second group left, Colin knew that they would take nine or ten months to get there. But he also knew that letters could go much faster via London and Sydney. He could have put the bishop’s mind at rest by letting him know that a second group was on the way and by which route. Unfortunately, he did nothing.


Christmas and New Year must have been difficult days for Pompallier. He will have held Christmas services for the Catholics on the Hokianga, perhaps he paid a pastoral visit to the Bay of Islands. But his thoughts will have gone back over the two years since he had left France. All that time, no word from France, from Colin, from his friends in Lyon, from other Marists, from his family. No word from Rome where he had felt so much appreciated. No new missionaries, no money. He knew nothing of what Colin had done, or of what was on the way. He felt abandoned and let down. His letters, begging for a response, for help, for encouragement, remained unanswered. Was nobody listening?


His two companions did not seem to share his impatience and his frustrations. Perhaps they were less ambitious, happy enough to do the things at hand. At least Catherin Servant showed no sign of the mental strain that plagued the bishop. Unfortunately, the three had not grown into a community of warm support for each other. In fact, relations were strained and unpleasant.


Bishop Pompallier still had no idea how his four missionaries on the two Polynesian islands had fared. Fourteen months after he had dropped them with scant resources: no word from them. They could have been killed, or they could have died of disease for all he knew, and he lacked the money to charter a ship to visit them.


In actual fact the four missionaries were in good health and holding their own in an environment that was tough and strange, but they related well to the local people. During the first four months Bataillon had not even known that he had a confrere on Futuna. After five months Peter Chanel had been able to spend a month with Bataillon on Wallis, and from that time they continued to exchange letters. Since the sails of the Raiatea had disappeared over the horizon, the four of them had received no word from their bishop and superior; just a sailor’s yarn about a French bishop in New Zealand. Like him, they had received no mail, no money, no sign of life, neither from home, nor from him. Unlike him, it did not worry them much. Their work was not fruitless. They were slowly winning the hearts of the Polynesian people, by making friends, by learning their language and by being close to them in the joys and the sorrows of life.


By the end of the year, the second group, had safely reached Valparaiso after a fast and relatively easy voyage. They were gracefully received by the Picpus missionaries and were busy absorbing all the new insights and perspectives of another world. Like their predecessors they were on the wrong side of the Pacific and wondering how to get to their destination, but at least, unlike their predecessors, they knew where to go.


Notes

  1. ↑ CS, doc. 54.
  2. ↑ Faculties had first been asked 19.05 and granted 26.06 (CS, doc. 35 [3 & 4]). As the missionaries were not satisfied, further specifications were asked 20.07 (CS, doc. 42) and granted.
  3. ↑ LRO, doc. 4 [8].
  4. ↑ ACPF Congressi Oceania, vol. I, 485r – 488r.
  5. ↑ CS, doc. 55.
  6. ↑ Cambis (or someone else) may have got a letter away as soon as the Marists were booked on the Basque.
  7. ↑ APM, Baty to Colin, 12.01.39. Other information thanks to Jean Louis Schuester, SSCC Archives, Rome.
  8. ↑ APM, Baty to Colin, 12.01.
  9. ↑ APM, Épalle to Colin, 14.01.
  10. ↑ APM 1404/20033: Baty to Colin, 12.01.39, 16.01.39, 25.01.39. Épalle to Colin, 14.01.39. Petit to Colin, 15.01.39.
  11. ↑ Cf. above, p. 67f.
  12. ↑ Information in the following two paragraphs, on Futuna and Wallis, is taken mostly from the diary of Peter Chanel for 1838, EC, pp 318 – 403. The dates refer to the diary. Many items occur more than once in the diary.
  13. ↑ Cf. above, p. 73f.
  14. ↑ Captain Bureau, of the Aimable Joséphine was killed in 1834 on the small Fijian island of Viwa, the islanders massacred his crew and pillaged the ship. Four years later Dumont d’Urville on the Astrolabe, bombarded Viwa. Although Jore does not mention a second ship, we can guess from the rumour that Jones picked up, that the Astrolabe was assisted by the Zélée, the other ship under the command of Dumont d’Urville. Chanel did not know that the captain in question was Dumont d’Urville, whose book he happened to be reading at the time (22.07; 09.12; most likely Voyage pittoresque autour du monde: Résumé general des voyages de découvertes, Paris, L. Tenré, 1835; cf. LRO, doc. 28 [3], n. 3). Cf. Jore, op. cit., I, p. 100 & II, p. 163. Jore puts the reprisal in 1839, but in the light of Chanel’s diary this must be corrected to read 1838.
  15. ↑ A medicinal liqueur they used for all sorts of ills.
  16. ↑ Cf. LRO, doc. 28 [26].
  17. ↑ LRO, doc. 23.
  18. ↑ LRO, doc. 28.
  19. ↑ LRO, docs. 25, 26 & 27; cf. above, p. 72.
  20. ↑ Cf. EC, pp. 313ff.
  21. ↑ Cf. above, p. 46f.
  22. ↑ Cf. above, p. 58f.
  23. ↑ Cf. Luzbetak, The Church and Cultures, pp. 203 – 222. With a wink at his own experience in Papua New Guinea, Luzbetak identifies cuisinophobia as a symptom of culture shock. Cf. p. 206.
  24. ↑ Laval too, op. cit. p. 35, makes the point that, even before contact, the women of the Gambier Islands were always modestly dressed with a long tapa knotted over one shoulder.



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