O le fale oe le Fe’e : the house of the Octopus.

"I'd like to be, under the sea, in an octopus' garden in the shade.
He'd let us in, knows where we've been, in his octopus' garden in the shade.
I'd ask my friends to come and see an octopus' garden with me" - The Beatles

In oral history, the Seumanutafa lineage can be traced back to le Fe'e- literally the octopus. In the early 1890’s, Reverend John Stair, and British Consul John Williams hiked from Apia to the ruins of a temple, known as the ‘Fale o Fe’e’ or Temple of the Octopus. The short story below combines the legend recounted by Williams, and the walk journaled by Stair.

 

O le fale oe le Fe’e : the house of the Octopus.

‘Do you mean an animal- a real octopus... or a man who was like an octopus?’ the priest asked. ‘Where did it come from?’

‘O le Fe’e na sau mai Fiti.’ murmured the brown man, crouching to sit on a large flat-topped stone.

‘The Octopus came out of Fiji... an aitu,’ Williams translated, without being asked.

‘Aitu?’ the priest again.

‘A spirit,’ Williams went on.

‘A demon?’ furthered the priest.

‘Probably not- neither good nor bad’ Williams countered patiently.

‘Sometimes an animal… perhaps a man’ the old man went on. Williams translated softly.

The priest watched the old man’s eyes twinkle and wondered at his age. He could have been anywhere between thirty and seventy- his eyes were bright but narrowed by the sun and his close cropped hair was black. His stomach was flat and the tendons in his timber coloured forearms rippled gently below the skin, though he held his machete loosely.    

‘…maybe he was a man like an octopus, or an octopus like a man… maybe he had many hands or he moved as though he had many hands…,’, the old man continued. ‘Perhaps he could change himself, and become like the stones and the coral, to hide... or to watch’.

The priest looked around the clearing they sat in, at the large, crumbling blocks of white stone- seemingly frozen in the act of tumbling to the grass. They were collectively disorganised, and yet unmistakeably placed in a rough circle, stacked in places. He and Williams had already walked more than a day from the ocean. Cut coral blocks could not get here easily- no man would be able to carry them alone. Several thick wooden poles still stood, mossy and branchless within the broken block walls.

The old man talked on: ‘When he came, first he came near to Apia, he rested a little while on the beach. But it did not suit him, perhaps there were already aitu there, or too many people, but he left the sea. He must have followed the river… he could not be too far from water.’

The priest sympathised. The walk up had been through thick, green jungle, made more dense by the oppressive humidity. His ankles and calves ached from balancing, as they had marched over uneven lava boulders lining the river which they had followed up the valley. He congratulated himself again on not yet having removed his jacket and tie- no small concession to the heat and atmosphere. He had already consumed a pint or more of water, and he was no octopus.

‘He lived first in a cave,’ the old man stated, as though his conviction were rising.

‘There’s plenty around.’ Williams waved vaguely at the surrounding basalt stone cliffs, peeking from the jungle below the mountainous spurs.

‘To build his home- he must have had help- many aitu came.’

‘Bloody plenty of them’ thought the priest… ‘there’s a spirit for morning, noon and night every day of the week- for every battle and cause.’ The priest had already experienced great difficulty in trying to convince people there could be only one God. They laughed at the thought. ‘Your one God would be too busy’ one prospect had commented seriously. ‘To watch over my brother fishing, and my children playing, and my wife working and to still be with me when I call on him to help me gamble.’

The old man had settled into his story now, and carried on without prompting. ‘One day, before his house was finished, some women came to bathe in the river nearby. One was heavily pregnant… when the time came, she cried out in pain. The baby did not come quickly.’

‘The aitu who were helping the fe’e to build his home heard her cries and they fled the noise. The fe’e followed up the mountain.‘

A rumble rolled up the valley and Williams looked up at the sky, to see it bruised, grey and purple toward the harbour they had come from. Rain was coming, and they would not be able to stay much longer.

‘For a time the fe’e waited’ the old man stared out at the rising storm above the ocean. ‘But eventually, he became impatient and he grumbled.’

‘He had a found a perfect place for a home, and had even begun to build it, now he wanted to return to it. The fe’e sent an aitu as a messenger to the village that the women had come from. It is near here.’

‘The fe’e said tell them “I will go to the place where I was before. I will be the matua of the land and their sign in all things. I will return to my home.”’

‘He came back?’ asked the Priest, turning as a small stream of dust and pebbles tricked from the nearest blocks. Nothing else moved. The jungle, noisy and bustling with birds on the hike up, was now still and silent.

‘Ioe’

‘An agreement was made’ added Williams. ‘Now the villages in this region use the Octopus as an emblem, a symbol for their warriors and canoes.’

‘Faititili o le fe'e tautala‘ ended the old man, standing and tapping his machete on a stone as he gazed out at the skyline.  ‘O le taimi nei e alu’

‘Faititili? Thunder’ guessed the priest. ‘Is he afraid?’

‘Perhaps... but not of the weather. It’s time to go’ Williams stood up and looked around the clearing for the porters. He pretended not to notice a thick green vine retracting, disappearing behind one of the nearby stones.

 

This story has been adapted from the sources below:

'A SAMOAN LEGEND'- presumed by J. C. Williams, Esq., the British Consul at Apia

“O LE FALE-O-LE-FE'E”: OR, RUINS OF AN OLD SAMOAN TEMPLE by Rev John B Stair

Seumanutafa Moepogai and the storm of 1889

I wrote here a long time ago, about Judge Gurr and Fanua, and their deportation from Samoa in 1927, for their opposition to New Zealand governance of Samoa. That blog mentioned Fanua’s father, Seumanutafa Moepogai*; my great, great, great grandfather.

Seumanutafa lived between 1852-1918, 66 volatile years in which modern Samoa would begin to be forged. A blog is an inadequate biography - what follows is simply one story.

Seumanutafa Moepogai was born ‘Talalelei’, in 1852 and he was renamed after being adopted from his wider family. Adoption is, and was, common in his society- once adopted and renamed, there remained no question of identity or place in his aiga (one could hold one place in a family or many simultaneously). His daughter Fanua herself would also be adopted by Seumanutafa and his wife, Faatulia.

Seumanutafa is described in several historical records, and by Robert Louis Stephenson, as ‘Chief’ of Apia- and although it may be an incomplete translation of his position, it indicates his status:

“I have been once down to Apia, to a huge native feast at Seumanutafa’s, the chief of Apia.” Wrote RLS; later describing a photograph of the 3 of them: “Seumanu…is chief of Apia, a rather big gun in this place, looking like a large, fatted, military Englishman, bar the colour.  Faatulia, next me, is a bigger chief than her husband.”  (1891)

The respect between the Seumanutafa and Steveson families, was obviously reciprocated as Stevenson recalled: “Seumanu gave me one of his names; and when my name was called at the ava drinking, behold, it was Au mai taua ma manu-vao!  You would scarce recognise me, if you heard me thus referred to!”

In the 1880s, Seumanutafa’s Apia was the central battleground for more than one civil war - the flames of which were stoked by Germany, the USA and Britain wrestling for colonial influence.

War for supremacy or control was not new to Samoa. For three millennia prior, Samoan rule had paradoxically been both divided and bound by titles. Power shifted according to the rivals of the day- it was not fixed in a single title; dynasties waxed and waned as power was attained or lost in battle, or built and consolidated through trade, negotiation and relationships. By Seumanutafa’s time, Samoa had four recognised ‘paramount’ titles.

However, in the colonial Pacific, it was inconvenient for palagi to deal with multiple regional leaders (least of all those that felt an obligation to make decisions through a complex democratic system of nu’u fono ma le matai- village meetings and representatives). For colonisers, a single ruler was needed, to negotiate - or preferrably not - on behalf of the ‘nation’. The ensuing Samoan wars to claim and consolidate titles were brutal.

However, one deciding event in the wars, and the one for which Seumanutafa would be well remembered was determined not in battle- but by nature, when on March 15, 1889 a great cyclone struck Apia harbour.

At the time, Britain, America and Germany all had warships in Apia harbour, providing military support, arms and occasionally indiscriminate airborne shelling - in support of their chosen champions.

When the cyclone struck however, the proverbial tide turned. According to US Rear-AdmiralL.A. Kimberly, in his report:

“SIR: It becomes my painful duty to report to the Department the disastrous injury and loss sustained by the vessels under my command in the harbor of Apia during the hurricane which swept these waters March 15 and 16.

When the gale commenced there were in the harbor the following men of war: U.S. ships Trenton, Vandalia, and Nipsic; H[er].B[rittanic].M[ajesty's]. ship Calliope, and H[is].I[mperial].G[ermanic].M[ajesty's]. ships Addler, Olga, and Eber...”

Within those two days, 6 warships- 3 German and 3 American- were beached or wrecked and almost 150 of their crewmen dead.

What is most remarkable though, is that more palagi lives would have been lost- had not the Samoans leapt into the deadly sea to save their antagonists. Seumanutafa led the rescue.

Rear-Admiral L.A. Kimberly again: “Seumanutafa, chief of Apia, and Selu Leauanae did excellent service in saving life, and took the lead in directing the work of the natives. They organized boats' crews and carried out the suggestions of the offices. Seumanutafa took charge of and steered the boat which was the first to carry lines to the wreck in the early morning of the 17th, while it was yet dark, and the passage across the reef and approach to the Trenton was beset with difficulty and danger”

The actions and courage of the Samoans were undeniably heroic:  

“The natives in the surf, under the direction of two of their chiefs, Seumanu Tafa and Salu Anae, had succeeded in getting lines to the vessels, and double hawsers were quickly stretched to the shore. Scores of eager hands were outstretched to assist in the work. The waves broke high on the beach, and the undertow was so strong that even the natives narrowly escaped being carried out into the bay. The white men on shore scarcely dared venture into the surf. The rain poured more heavily. The clouds of flying sand grew thicker and more…

To one who saw the noble work of those men during the storm, it is a cause of wonder that they should be called savages by more enlightened races. There seemed to be no instinct of the savage in a man who could rush into that boiling torrent of water that broke upon the reef, and place his own life in peril to save the helpless drowning men of a foreign country.”-  A.H.Godbey A.M. 1890

The sheer scale of the loss gave pause to the German and American fleets- but it would be another decade before the 3 foreign powers would settle their disputes formally, in the tripartite agreement of 1899 (which would be drafted by Seumanutafa’s son-in-law Judge Gurr)- separating American Samoa from German Samoa.

Seumanutafa lived on to see the arrival of the New Zealand expeditionary force which took power from Germany in 1914, without a shot fired. The Kiwis included a young former customs clerk from Wellington who would become his grandson-in-law, Lloyd Halliday.

In 1918 Seumanutafa fell finally to the influenza epidemic brought by the Talune, along with almost a quarter of his countrymen and women- but that’s another story.

 I wish to offer my sincere thanks to the Seumanutafa aiga for keeping and sharing your stories. I have borrowed from them to tell this brief story, and I do so with respect and love.  Fa’afetai tele lava.

*Records from the time refer variously to Seumanu, Seumanu Tafa, and Seumanutafa Pogai- based on photographs and events, and references to his family, I must presume these refer to the same man.