Abstract
This chapter turns to three groups whose paths frequently met on cricket pitches around Samoa: white colonists; men and women with mixed Samoan and foreign ancestry, known locally as ‘afakasi; and the naval and armed forces who visited or were stationed at Samoa. Even more than foreign officials, white colonists understood kirikiti as a menace to their prospects of commercial success. ‘Afakasi men and women, conversely, used both ‘English’ cricket and kirikiti to confirm their ties to the foreign and Samoan communities respectively. Finally, Anglophone military men saw both cricket and kirikiti as an escape from boredom. These contrasting responses illustrate how the cricket pitch was a site of real and symbolic contest in Samoa—including within the broad category of ‘colonisers’.
A game was played at the Matautu ground on Saturday afternoon last, in which the ‘Rapid’ team competed with a local eleven. Originally it was intended to be a representative match, ‘Ship versus Shore Half-Castes’, but, unfortunately, all of the latter did not turn up to time, consequently, instead of the match contemplated, a scratch eleven, composed of one White six Half-Castes and four Samoans, faced their formidable opponents.
‘Cricket’, Samoa Times and South Sea Advertiser, 25 November 1893, p. 2
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Notes
- 1.
‘A Nine Months’ Cruise of HMS Rapid’, Sydney Morning Herald, 25 December 1893, p. 4; ‘Cruise of the Rapid’, Samoa Weekly Herald, 3 February 1894, p. 3.
- 2.
‘Afakasi is, of course, the Samoan transliteration of the inherently ugly term ‘half-caste’. Even so, I use it here because it does not necessarily have the derogatory connotations of its English antecedent and is useful in denoting a segment of population whose historical experiences in Samoa were unique. Their place in the colonial social order, moreover, was very frequently distinct from that of both Samoans and ‘Europeans’.
- 3.
Murray’s varied official roles meant he featured prominently in the local newspapers until his death from typhoid in May 1897. ‘Obituary’, Samoa Weekly Herald, 8 May 1897, p. 2.
- 4.
For an overview of European settlement in Samoa, see Malama Meleisea, The Making of Modern Samoa: Traditional Authority and Colonial Administration in the History of Western Samoa (Suva: Institute of Pacific Studies of the University of the South Pacific, 1987), pp. 31–34; Richard Gilson, Samoa 1830 to 1900: the politics of a multi-cultural community (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1970), especially pp. 162–290.
- 5.
Gilson, Samoa 1830 to 1900, p. 178.
- 6.
Ibid., p. 231.
- 7.
According to Gilson, moreover, the number of visitors and castaways frequently outnumbered ‘permanent’ residents. Ibid., p. 178.
- 8.
Ibid., pp. 254–256; Meleisea, The Making of Modern Samoa, p. 33.
- 9.
Gilson, Samoa 1830 to 1900, p. 257.
- 10.
Leilani Leafaitulagi Grace Burgoyne, ‘Redefining ‘The Beach’: The Municipality of Apia, 1879–1900’ (MA diss., University of Auckland, 2006), especially pp. 38–41, pp. 123–126.
- 11.
Gilson, Samoa 1830 to 1900, p. 367.
- 12.
‘Regatta and Sports for Boxing Day’, Samoa Times and South Sea Gazette, 22 December 1877, p. 2.
- 13.
‘Sport in Apia’, Samoa Times and South Sea Advertiser, 14 June 1890, p. 2.
- 14.
‘Apia Sports Club’, Samoa Times and South Sea Advertiser, 20 January 1894, p. 3.
- 15.
‘Talk About Town’, Samoa Times and South Sea Gazette, 22 November 1879, p. 2.
- 16.
See ‘Sporting’, Samoa Times and South Sea Gazette, 4 June 1881, p. 2; ‘News from Samoa’, Auckland Star, 2 March 1887, p. 5; ‘Cricket Match’, Samoa Times and South Sea Advertiser, 9 March 1889.
- 17.
Anon., A Samoan Cricket Match, 19, MS-Papers-2702, Alexander Turnbull Library (ATL), Wellington.
- 18.
Papalagi claims to Samoan land reached ridiculous levels in the 1870s. Most transactions were made in times of war and involved chiefs selling land they had no authority over, or which had been won from their enemies. Indeed, different parties often sold the same land; the Lands Commission established after the Berlin Treaty of 1889 found that claims came to more than twice the total area of the islands. The Commission eventually adjudged more than 90 per cent of these claims invalid and prohibited further sales outside of the Apia Municipality. Even so, some 35 per cent of cultivable land came under papalagi ownership. See Gilson, Samoa 1830 to 1900, pp. 276–290, pp. 404–415; Meleisea, The Making of Modern Samoa, pp. 43–45.
- 19.
Doug Munro and Stewart Firth, ‘German labour policy and the partition of the Western Pacific: The view from Samoa’, Journal of Pacific History 25:1 (1990), pp. 100–101.
- 20.
Ibid., p. 100.
- 21.
Ibid., p. 85.
- 22.
F.W. Christian, Eastern Pacific Lands: Tahiti and the Marquesas Islands (London: Robert Scott, 1910), pp. 255–256.
- 23.
‘Cricket in Tutuila’, Samoa Times and South Sea Advertiser, 23 April 1892, p. 3.
- 24.
F.W. Christian, ‘Cricket As She Is Played In Samoa’, Star, 15 May 1896, p. 4.
- 25.
Ibid.
- 26.
‘Affairs in Samoa’, Auckland Evening Star, 27 March 1888, p. 8.
- 27.
‘Local and General News’, Samoa Times and South Sea Advertiser, 14 June 1890, p. 2.
- 28.
‘Local and General News’, Samoa Times and South Sea Advertiser, 8 April 1893, p. 2.
- 29.
Untitled, Samoa Times and South Sea Advertiser, 26 August 1893, p. 2.
- 30.
This letter first appeared in the New Zealand Herald and then, six weeks later, in the Samoa Times and South Sea Advertiser. ‘W.D.P.K.’, ‘Commercial Prospects of Samoa’, New Zealand Herald, 1 May 1893, p. 6.
- 31.
Jahresbericht über die Entwicklung der deutschen Schutzgebiete in Afrika und der Südsee im Jahre 1902/1903, Berlin, 1904, pp. 119–121 (Annual Report 1902/1903) cited in Stewart Firth, ‘Governors Versus Settlers: The Dispute Over Chinese Labour In German Samoa’, New Zealand Journal of History 11:2 (1977), p. 157.
- 32.
‘Apia Sports Club’, Samoanische Zeitung, 4 October 1913.
- 33.
Untitled article, Samoanische Zeitung, 17 December 1904.
- 34.
‘Departure of Mr. and Mrs. Huckett’, Samoanische Zeitung, 28 May 1904; ‘Cricket Match’, Samoanische Zeitung, 30 July 1904; Untitled article, Samoanische Zeitung, 13 June 1914, p. 9.
- 35.
Firth, ‘Governors Versus Settlers’, p. 159.
- 36.
According to Stewart Firth, Samoans would only work for ten times the wages paid by the DHPG to its imported plantation workers; in good seasons Samoans were difficult to secure at any wage. Ibid., p. 157.
- 37.
Ibid., p. 164.
- 38.
Ibid., p. 178.
- 39.
Repeated in Samoanische Zeitung, 27 June 1903, cited in Firth, ‘Governors Versus Settlers’, p. 162.
- 40.
Ibid., p. 173.
- 41.
George Steinmetz, The Devil’s Handwriting: Precoloniality and the German Colonial State in Qingdao, Samoa, and Southwest Africa (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2008), p. 342.
- 42.
‘Sam. Zeitung, 15.4.05’, XVII.A.I.: Government and Administration of Justice (vol. 4), Pacific Manuscripts Bureau (PMB) 479: English summaries of papers relating to Western Samoa: German Administration, Australian National University (ANU) [microfilm].
- 43.
‘Sam. Zeitung, 6.5.05’, XVII.A.I, PMB 479.
- 44.
‘Life in Samoa’, New Zealand Herald, 11 February 1924.
- 45.
‘Samoans at Sport’, Evening Post, 19 August 1936.
- 46.
‘Glider Club for Apia’, Samoa Herald, 19 September 1930.
- 47.
‘Local and General’, Samoa Times, 3 January 1920, p. 5.
- 48.
Mary Boyd, ‘The Record in Western Samoa to 1945’, in Angus Ross (ed.), New Zealand’s record in the Pacific Islands in the twentieth century (Auckland: Longman Paul for the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs, 1969), p. 135.
- 49.
‘Care-free Samoans’, New Zealand Herald, 6 October 1938, p. 10.
- 50.
This discussion draws on the detailed and revealing accounts of Malama Meleisea and particularly Damon Salesa. See Meleisea, The Making of Modern Samoa, especially pp. 155–182; Toeolesulusulu Damon Salesa, ‘Half-castes between the Wars: Colonial Categories in New Zealand and Samoa’, New Zealand Journal of History 34:1 (2000), pp. 98–116; Damon Salesa, ‘Samoa’s Half-Castes and Some Frontiers of Comparison’, in Ann Laura Stoler (ed.), Haunted by Empire: Geographies of Intimacy in North American History (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006), pp. 72–93.
- 51.
Salesa, ‘Half-castes between the Wars’, p. 98.
- 52.
See Meleisea, The Making of Modern Samoa, pp. 159–160.
- 53.
Salesa, ‘Half-castes between the wars’, 2000, p. 102.
- 54.
Meleisea, The Making of Modern Samoa, pp. 158–159. ‘Mad Jack’ Stowers lived on Savai’i from around 1840 and raised his children to be “wildly proud” of their British heritage.
- 55.
Toeolesulusulu Damon Salesa, ‘Emma and Phebe: “Weavers of the Border”’, Journal of the Polynesian Society 123: 2 (2014), p. 146.
- 56.
Ibid., p. 164, p. 166. Margaret Mead originally coined this evocative phrase in a short essay about Phebe Coe (later Richardson) published in 1960. Margaret Mead, ‘Weaver of the Border’, in Joseph B. Casagrande (ed.), In the Company of Man. Twenty Portraits by Anthropologists (Harper & Bros: New York, 1960), pp. 175–210.
- 57.
Salesa, ‘Samoa’s Half-Castes’, p. 85. For polo, see Thomas Berry Cusack-Smith, Diary—25 March 1897, MSX-2765: Diary (1897), Cusack-Smith, Thomas Berry (Sir), 1859–1929: Papers, MS-Group-0066, ATL.
- 58.
Stevenson to Sidney Colvin, 12 March 1892, in Bradford A. Booth and Ernest Mehew (eds.), The letters of Robert Louis Stevenson, vol. 8 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), p. 247.
- 59.
The so-called Matautu Institute was initially conceived by Rev. Archibald Hunt of the London Missionary Society and Mr W.D.P. Keppel, a botanist and all-round busybody who frequently found himself a figure of fun in Samoan newspapers. ‘Proposed Club and Institute, Matautu, Savaii’, Samoa Weekly Herald, 24 March 1894, p. 2.
- 60.
‘Cricket’, Samoa Times and South Sea Advertiser, 16 November 1889, p. 2.
- 61.
‘Local and General News’, Samoa Times and South Sea Advertiser, 23 December 1893, p. 2.
- 62.
‘Cricket’, Samoa Times and South Sea Advertiser, 25 November 1893, p. 2.
- 63.
‘Dismissal of the Municipal Police Magistrate’, Samoa Times and South Sea Gazette, 14 February 1880, p. 2. Their disputed status was again raised when the US government sent representatives to rule on the claims of American citizens whose property had been damaged in the wars of the 1890s. Both Fruean claims were dismissed because they could not present proof of their father’s citizenship and lawful marriage. See United States Department of State, Claims of American citizens, Apia, in the Samoan Islands (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1913), pp. 26, 42–43.
- 64.
‘Local and General News’, Samoa Weekly Herald, 11 March 1893, p. 2.
- 65.
‘Local and General News’, Samoa Weekly Herald, 20 May 1893, p. 2.
- 66.
US Department of State, Claims of American citizens, pp. 141–142.
- 67.
In cricketing parlance, a ‘boundary rider’ is a fielder positioned at or near the boundary line that demarcates the field of play.
- 68.
In 1932 the Fono of American Samoa forbade anyone deemed to have less than three quarters’ Samoan ancestry from holding matai titles. See Meleisea, The Making of Modern Samoa, p. 174.
- 69.
The American ethnologist Bruce Cartwright engaged in an extended discussion of the status of ‘afakasi in American Samoa in his testimony before the 1930 Commission into US naval rule. He pointed out that Ned Ripley, whose mother was descended from a high-ranking Samoan family, had become an important chief in his village. See United States Congress, American Samoa Hearings before the commission appointed by the President of the United States in accordance with Public resolution no. 89, 70th Congress (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1931), pp. 3–12.
- 70.
According to census records, Wightman and Scanlan were bookkeepers and Allen was a plumber, while Meredith was an electrician and the son of American Samoa’s postmaster.
- 71.
Public Works Employees to the Commandant via the Public Works Officer, ‘Permission to play tennis—request for’, 4 September 1931, P10 Amusement and recreation [#6], General Correspondence, 1921–1949, Box 28 (NN-373-91), RG 313: Records of Naval Operating Forces, 1849–1997, National Archives and Records Administration—Pacific Region (NARA), San Bruno.
- 72.
Lieutenant Commander T.F. Darden Jr. [President of League], ‘Memorandum for Team Captains and Managers’, 23 February 1938, P10 [Amusement and Recreation] [#2], Box 28, RG 313.
- 73.
Meleisea, The Making of Modern Samoa, pp. 162–163; Salesa, ‘Half-castes Between the Wars’, p. 100.
- 74.
Government Council minutes, 15 February 1907, Samoanische Zeitung, GCA, 2/6/13/I, fol. 2 11, cited in Evelyn Wareham, Race and Realpolitik: the politics of colonization in German Samoa (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2002), p. 124.
- 75.
Meleisea, The Making of Modern Samoa, pp. 162–163.
- 76.
Rev. James Sibree, ‘Correspondence’, Samoanische Zeitung, 13 August 1904.
- 77.
Albert Wendt, ‘Guardians and Wards: A Study of the Origins, Causes and the First Two Years of the Mau in Western Samoa’ (MA diss., Victoria University, 1965), pp. 98–99. For a full account of Nelson’s life and his role in both the Mau and wider currents of anti-colonial protest, see Patricia O’Brien, Tautai: Sāmoa, world history, and the life of Taʻisi O. F. Nelson (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2017).
- 78.
‘The Apia Sports Club’s Trip to Manono and Apolima’, Samoanische Zeitung, 14 October 1911, p. 9.
- 79.
Untitled article, Samoanische Zeitung, 12 July 1913, p. 10.
- 80.
Salesa, ‘Half-castes between the Wars’, p. 101.
- 81.
Untitled article, Samoanische Zeitung, 7 November 1914, p. 7.
- 82.
Malama Meleisea, The Making of Modern Samoa, p. 175.
- 83.
Damon T. Salesa, ‘Half-castes Between the Wars’, p. 98.
- 84.
Richardson to Bell, 11 July 1928, Correspondence with Sir George Richardson, Sir Francis Henry Dillon Bell—Political Correspondence and Papers, Bell Family Papers, MS-Copy-Micro-0798, ATL.
- 85.
New Zealand Ministry of External Affairs, Mandated territory of Western Samoa (report of visit by W. Nosworthy, Minister of External Affairs to), report prepared for the League of Nations General Assembly (Wellington: Government Publisher, 1927), pp. 23–24.
- 86.
Wendt, ‘Guardians and Wards’, p. 100.
- 87.
Meleisea, The Making of Modern Samoa, p. 171.
- 88.
Charles Perrin Skerrett and Charles Edward MacCormick, Report of Royal Commission Concerning the Administration of Western Samoa, report prepared for New Zealand Royal Commission on Western Samoa (Wellington: Government Publisher, 1928), pp. xvii–xviii.
- 89.
‘Duke in Samoa’, Auckland Star, 25 February 1935.
- 90.
‘Aiding and Abetting’, Samoa Herald, 17 April 1930. Vaisomo village is situated just outside of Apia and had been the site of many Mau activities. Even today, a sign proudly proclaims the village as ‘the birthplace of the Mau’.
- 91.
‘Aiding and Abetting’, Samoa Herald, 17 April 1930.
- 92.
‘Aiding and Abetting—Two Convictions’, Samoa Herald, 24 April 1930.
- 93.
This paragraph draws on Richard Gilson’s description of the period of ‘Naval Justice’ in Samoa during the nineteenth century. Gilson, Samoa 1830 to 1900, pp. 198–221.
- 94.
Ibid., p. 201.
- 95.
Burgoyne, ‘Redefining “the Beach”’, pp. 123–124.
- 96.
‘Music’, Samoa Times and South Sea Gazette, 30 April 1881, p. 2.
- 97.
‘Local and General News’, Samoa Weekly Herald, 23 August 1893, p. 2.
- 98.
Ibid.
- 99.
Tony Mason and Eliza Riedi, Sport and the Military: the British armed forces, 1880–1960 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 32–37.
- 100.
Wanda Ellen Wakefield, Playing to Win: Sports and the American Military, 1898–1945 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), p. 5.
- 101.
See, for example, Cusack-Smith, Diary—12 November 1892, MSX-2760: Diary (1892), Cusack-Smith, Thomas Berry (Sir), 1859–1929: Papers, MS-Group-0066, ATL; Cusack-Smith, Diary—10, 12, 17, 24 August 1893, MSX-2761: Diary (1893), ATL.
- 102.
‘Cricket Match’, Samoa Times and South Sea Gazette, 2 July 1881, p. 2.
- 103.
‘American Base Ball’, Samoa Times and South Sea Observer, 2 March 1889, p. 2.
- 104.
John Arthur Barry, ‘HMS Pylades’, Australian Town and Country Journal, 1 June 1904, p. 34.
- 105.
G.C. Harrison, ‘Cricket in the Navy’, in P.F. Warner (ed.), Imperial Cricket (London: London & Counties Press Association, 1912), p. 468.
- 106.
Samoa Times and South Sea Gazette, 4 June 1881; 11 June 1881; 30 July 1881.
- 107.
‘Cricket’, Samoa Times and South Sea Advertiser, 27 August 1892, p. 2.
- 108.
Cusack-Smith, Diary—17 August 1893.
- 109.
‘HMS Opal at Samoa’, Mercury, 9 March 1886, p. 4.
- 110.
Cusack-Smith, Diary—7–14 May 1891, MSX-2759: Diary (1891), ATL.
- 111.
Mason and Riedi, Sport and the Military, p. 7.
- 112.
Governor to the Secretary of the Navy, 1 March 1905, GOVERNMENT AFFAIRS, GENERAL, 1905, Reel 23 (Series No. 5, Annual Reports on Government Affairs, 1902–1921…), T1182: Records of the Government of American Samoa, National Archives and Records Administration—Pacific Region (NARA), San Bruno.
- 113.
‘Baseball in Samoa’, San Francisco Call, 25 May 1913, p. 51.
- 114.
Lieut. Francis Lee Albert, Chaplain Corps, U.S.N. to Secretary of the Navy, ‘Chaplain’s Annual Report for the Year 1923’, 31 December 1923, Reel 32, B.F. Kneubuhl, Birds of Samoa, Books of Samoa…, T1182.
- 115.
General Correspondence, 1921–1949, Box 28 (NN-373-91), RG 313; Records of Naval Operating Forces, 1849–1997, National Archives and Records Administration—Pacific Region (NARA), San Bruno.
- 116.
See, for example, Lieutenant Commander T.F. Darden Jr. [President of League], ‘Memorandum for Team Captains and Managers’, 23 February 1938, P10 [Amusement and Recreation], General Correspondence, 1921–1949, Box 28 (NN-373-91), RG 313.
- 117.
The lack of enthusiasm that German crews—and indeed German colonists and officials—showed for organised sport can be partly attributed to the existence of distinctive traditions of physical culture. While British sporting culture—particularly tennis, regattas and horse racing—made some inroads among the upper classes after the turn of the century, modern sports were not fully ensconced in German mass culture until World War I. See Udo Merkel, ‘The Politics of Physical Culture and German Nationalism’, German Politics and Society 21:2 (2003), pp. 69–96.
- 118.
Untitled article, Samoanische Zeitung, 30 July 1910, p. 7.
- 119.
‘The Festivities’, Samoanische Zeitung, 13 August 1910, p. 7.
- 120.
S. J. Smith, ‘The Seizure and Occupation of Samoa’, in H. T. B. Drew (ed.), The War Effort of New Zealand (Auckland: Whitcombe and Tombs, 1923), p. 23.
- 121.
Ibid., p. 37.
- 122.
‘Ourselves’, The Pull Thro’, 7 November 1914, p. 2.
- 123.
‘No title’, The Pull Thro’, 7 November 1914, p. 3.
- 124.
C.J. Kinnersley, No title, The Pull Thro’, 7 November 1914, p. 2.
- 125.
‘The Bowling Campaign’, Samoa Times, 25 May 1918.
- 126.
Hermann Hiery, The Neglected War: The German South Pacific and the Influence of World War I (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1995), p. 158.
- 127.
The military side included Herbert McGirr, a fast bowling all-rounder who later played in New Zealand’s first test series in 1930, and Gilbert Howe, a wicketkeeper who had represented Wellington before the war. See ‘Cricket’, The Pull Thro’, 14 October 1914, p. 9.
- 128.
See ‘Cricket’, The Pull Thro’, 14 October 1914, pp. 9–10; 7 November 1914, p. 5; 5 December 1914, p. 7.
- 129.
‘Cricket’, The Pull Thro’, 5 December 1914, p. 7.
- 130.
‘Christmas Cheer’, Auckland Star, 7 December 1914, p. 6.
- 131.
‘Troops in Samoa’, New Zealand Herald, 5 January 1915, p. 6.
- 132.
‘Outdoor Sports and Pastimes’, Free Lance, 24 October 1914, p. 19.
- 133.
‘Cricket in Samoa’, Free Lance, 21 November 1914, p. 19.
- 134.
‘All Sorts of Sport’, Free Lance, 17 September 1915, p. 24.
- 135.
‘Apia Cricket Association’, Samoa Times, 9 September 1916, p. 4.
- 136.
‘Inaugurating the New Pitch at Apia Park’, Samoa Times, 7 July 1917, p. 4.
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Sacks, B. (2019). Colonists, ‘afakasi and military men: sundries on ‘the Beach’. In: Cricket, Kirikiti and Imperialism in Samoa, 1879–1939. Palgrave Studies in Sport and Politics. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27268-5_6
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