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Name
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Puka-Puka
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Type of carceral site
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Blackbirding
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Dates of use
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1847 – 1906
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Quote
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Huneree, t'ousan'ee, milionee milee!
Hippo! HIppo! Hooray!
Go t'hell t' Call-ay-oh!
It was a slaver chantey, for in the old days the blackbirders used to capture South Sea Islanders to dig guano in the Chincha islands [off the coast of Peru]. Two hundred were stolen from Puka-Puka.
Autobiography.
Frisbie, Florence Ngatokura. Miss Ulysses from Puka-Puka: The Autobiography of a South Sea Trader's Daughter. Translated by Robert Dean Frisbie, Macmillan, 1948, p. 11.
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He took William into the Cabin and gave him rum. Then he gave him a beautiful suit of black church clothes,a pair of boots, a silk hat, a handkerchief, and a fancy shirt with a stiff collar and a red necktie. And he told, Williams, by talking with his hands, to bring all the Puka-Pukans aboard his ship [...] Williams said okay, climbed into the captain's boat, and was rowed ashore. But as soon as the boat touched the beach he jumped out, waved his arms around, grabbed his silk hat so he wouldn't lose it, and yelled 'Run for your lives! Blackbirders!
Autobiography.
Frisbie, Florence Ngatokura. Miss Ulysses from Puka-Puka: The Autobiography of a South Sea Trader's Daughter. Translated by Robert Dean Frisbie, Macmillan, 1948, p. 31.
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I gaze into the fires of Hell,
Where sharks, rats, and heathens
Are writhing in the flames
Poetry/Autobiography.
Frisbie, Robert Dean. The Book of Puka-Puka. The Century Co., 1929, p. 35.
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When that was all done, I stood up in the middle of that great gathering and fearlessly spoke up, saying, 'Listen now to me, people of Pukapuka. Jehovah is the only God, Jehovah alone. Obey only him, and forsake all the countless gods that you are worshipping. People of Pukapuka, let us belong to Jehovah now and forever'
Oral History/History.
Manuae, Luka. "The Arrival of the Word of God to Pukapuka." 1869. The Journal of Pacific History, vol. 47, no. 4, December 2012, pp. 491-513, https://www.jstor.org/stable/41999444: p. 501.
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Danger Island, to give the place its English name, lies seven hundred and twenty miles northwest of Rarotonga, whence a supply schooner might arrive once or twice a year to carry away the copra crop, the only source of income for the six hundred people on the atoll.
Autobiography.
Frisbie, Robert Dean. The Book of Puka-Puka. The Century Co., 1929, p. 11.
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Authority
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Queensland Polynesian Labourers Act (1868); Pacific Islanders Protection Act 1872 & 1875 (UK)
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Archives and sources
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Cook Islands Library and Museum Society (Rarotonga).
Beaglehole, Ernest and Pearl. Ethnology of Pukapuka. Bernice P. Bishop Museum, 1938.
Borofsky, Robert & Howard, Alan. Making History: Pukapukan and Anthropological Constructions of Knowledge. Cambridge University Press, 1987.
Frisbie, Robert Dean. The Book of Puka-Puka. The Century Co., 1929.
London Missionary Society Archives (SOAS, UK),
Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa.
National Library of New Zealand.
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Contact
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Jerry/Kieren
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identifier
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SITE-PKPK