Typee : a Peep at Polynesian Life review by Josh

THE SEA — NUKUHEVA — RUNNING AWAY — LOST IN THE MOUNTAINS — THE TYPEE, NOBLE SAVAGES — TATTOOS AND TABOOS — CANNIBALS? — HAPPY POVERTY — CAPTIVITY AND ESCAPE — RANDOM NOTES

The decline of whaling and piracy over the past few centuries is probably for the best. Still, it’s hard not to feel at least a little regret for the idle young men of the 21st century, with nothing better to do than toil away in dead-end jobs and play video games. It would have comforted me in my younger days to know that, if worst came to worst, I could always quit the land and set off for parts unknown. Now there are no parts unknown - and few whalers to take us there even if there were.

Typee begins with exactly that fantasy. In 1841, at the age of twenty-one, Herman Melville signed onto the crew of the whaler Acushnet. Whales had already become scarce near the American East Coast, so the ship sailed for the Pacific. After roughly six months at sea, they arrived at Nuku Hiva, one of the remotest inhabited islands on earth.

The island, about 131 square miles in area, is divided by steep volcanic ridges into a series of lush valleys, each inhabited by its own tribe. When Melville first arrived he met members of the Happar tribe, who warned him about their enemies in the neighboring valley: the feared Typee, supposedly ferocious warriors and enthusiastic cannibals.

Europeans had known about Nuku Hiva for more than a century, but the island remained comparatively isolated. There had been little trade and relatively little sustained contact with the outside world. That isolation was about to end. Only weeks before Melville’s arrival, the French had landed a garrison and begun the process of colonization. Yet outside a small coastal presence, most of the population still lived as stone-age agriculturalists.

Despite believing the island swarmed with cannibals, Melville decided to desert his ship. He had signed onto a voyage expected to last years and felt abused by both captain and conditions. The crew had been surviving for months on stale water and six-month-old sea bread, which was about as appetizing as any other form of six-month-old bread.

Melville knew the captain would try to retrieve him by force and punish him severely if caught. A local tribe could likely be bribed with cloth, tools, or even a gun to turn him in. So he devised a plan: he and another disgruntled sailor named Toby would flee into the supposedly uninhabited mountains. The locals avoided these interior regions for fear of being captured and eaten by rival tribes. Melville figured he could hide there for a week, forage for tropical fruit, wait for the Acushnet to depart, and then safely return to one of the villages.

They packed light: a few pounds of Tobacco and a few sea biscuts. They stuffed the goods under their shirts and when an opportune moment arrived they broke away from the rest of the crew and made for the mountains. After a hard day of hiking through difficult terrain and pouring rain they took out their provisions. Toby reached under his shirt and “produced a small handful of something so soft, pulpy, and discoloured, that for a few moments he was as much puzzled as myself to tell by what possible instrumentality such a villainous compound had become engendered in his bosom. I can only describe it as a hash of soaked bread and bits of tobacco, brought to a doughy consistency by the united agency of perspiration and rain.” Unfortunately they discovered at this same time that there was no food to be forged in the mountains, so they would need to live on this “villainous compound” for until it was safe to return to the village.

Unfortunately, they also discovered there was almost nothing edible in the mountains. The tropical abundance they imagined existed mostly in the cultivated valleys below. Starving, exhausted, and nearly out of food, they eventually stumbled upon a settlement in one of the valleys. They had no idea whether they had reached the friendly Happar or the dreaded Typee. But the risk of being eaten seemed preferable to the certainty of starvation.

It turned out to be the Typee.

Contrary to reputation, the Typee treated the men kindly. They fed them, housed them, and assigned a villager named Kory-Kory to attend to their needs. Toby eventually escaped, but Melville remained for several months as a kind of accidental anthropologist.

Though he gradually learned some of the language and customs, Melville never entirely escaped the colonial framework of the “noble savage.” He repeatedly describes the Typee as simple and childlike - less intelligent than Europeans, but happier, kinder, and freer from the anxieties of “civilized” society.

At the same time, Melville’s understanding of the Typee was obviously limited by the language barrier. He could eventually follow the rough gist of conversations, but much of what he observed remained opaque to him. The book is full of moments where customs, rituals, and social relationships remain my