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And now time passed and now my big troubles began. Because Commander Du Petit Thouars came from France on his big ship with sixty guns to tell me I must say I am sorry to the King of the French for putting his two priests out of my country. He told me to give him two thousand Spanish dollars to clean away the insult and to make a twenty-one gun salute to his flag, and if I did not do these things by ten next morning he would fire away. "Blow away!" I said, "Your shots will not destroy my mountains. I am Queen of Tahiti, and will stand up for my rights." But my good friend Pritchard told me I must write to the King of the French and he would get the money and the gunpowder for the salute. And now time years passed and all the time the Frenchmen were demanding this and that. Some chiefs who were my enemies signed papers when I was away having my baby. They wrote to the King of the French asking him to help them. They thought they would be Kings! I disavowed their writings! Now came days of very bad trouble. Du Petit Thouars came back. He met with those four chiefs who wrote that paper. Again I was away to have a baby…So those four chiefs signed a paper to ask the King of the French to become our protector for our foreign affairs but still letting me be sovereign queen in Tahiti. But without my name the paper was nothing. So they sent to me saying, "Sign this paper or give money or they will fire upon us and take our land." "Money?" I said, "where has Pomare ten thousand dollars in cash? I have the land of my ancestors, and I have my people, but where have I ten thousand dollars?" … Therefore I sign this paper through my great fear of the French, and to prevent the bloodshed they will cause by firing on my people." Weeping I signed my name to the paper. And Tahiti was gone! To my oldest child I cried, "My child, I have signed away your land and your power." I wrote to the King of the French. Then I fled to the British Consul, my good friend Pritchard. Then I felt unsafe even with my good friend Pritchard and I fled to an English ship. Then they arrested my good friend Pritchard and imprisoned him and then sent him away in a ship. Then I took refuge on the island Raiatea. Then the Governor for the French, Bruat, forbid me to land in my own country without his permission! Then my people began to fight. There was nothing but troubles in my land. The great comet that appeared in the sky on Boxing Day of 1844 foretold it! More years of troubles and war. The French cut down all the breadfruit trees for miles along the seacoast. Not one stood. My people were driven back into the valley into their stronghold. They fought like warriors and drove the French back. But an old woman cried out: "I cry for my land of Tahiti. Our people will soon be opened like a lot of chickens." In December, in 1846, a man not Tahitian but from Rapa found a pathway up the cliff above the stronghold of my people. The French paid him $200 and he climbed up and attached a rope-ladder. Then the French troops climbed up and pointed their muskets down at my people in their stronghold. My people saw there was no more use to fight…We met at Moorea to discuss the terms. I got money every year, and I agreed to leave all foreign affairs in his hands. I agreed my mind had been darkened and I had listened to foreign words. * * * * *
Missionary George Pritchard--violently anti-French and anti-Catholic--encouraged Pomare in the mistaken belief that Queen Victoria would support her against the French. But as European nations manfully shouldered the `white man's burden' by snatching up `primitive' peoples' lands in the great age of European imperialism, Britain preferred to annex New Zealand, let the United States of America take Hawaii and cede Tahiti to the French--thus they preserved the elusive `balance of power' while despoiling Maoris, Hawaiians, and Tahitians of their lands, their religions, their cultures, their pride and their joy. |
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