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How Tonga Aids New Zealand
Frontispiece
Frontispiece
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“About 1750, some Tongans went to Lakemba (Lau, Fiji) and took part in wars there,
helping certain chiefs who rewarded them with large canoes of a kind not made in Tonga.
After that, many Tongans went at different times to Fiji in order to get these coveted
canoes and better weapons, spears and bows and arrows, made in Fiji (Cook had been
informed by the Tongans that Fijians excelled them in war and such arts as canoe building). Tu'ihalafatai, the Tu'i Kanokubolu who met Cook in 1777, resigned his position
in 1782 and went to Fiji, where he stayed until 1799; he was only one example of the
many chiefs who went to fight for protracted periods in Fiji.
“Unhappily, these visits had the most evil effects on Tonga. The young Tongans returned from Fiji to show off the new habits they had acquired there, not merely the blackened faces and war dress used in Fiji, but also the practice of treachery, secret murder even of relatives, rebellion, and cannibalism. It was only gradually that all the fruit appeared, but there can be no doubt that the disorder and savagery of this Dark Age — from the Civil War (1799) to the coming of Christianity — were due to the imitation of Fijian vices and the Fijian spirit of rebellion. That group was noted for its lack of unified control and for the constant fighting of its tribes. By imitating Fiji, Tonga became totally disunited, and for a time the authority of the Tu's Kanokubolu hardly existed. Had these conditions continued, and had Christianity not arrived opportunely with the rise of Taufa'ahau as the saviour of his country and the maker of modern Tonga, Tonga would probably have suffered Fiji's fate and eventually have lost its independence.”
A. H. Wood. “History and Geography of Tonga”. Auckland, 1943, p. 25.