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Congress with respect to it. Though hitherto suggestions from the Navy Department as to the necessity of an appropriation for the improvement of this harbor and for the establishment of a naval station received no attention whatever, a substantial sum has recently been voted in both Houses for that purpose, and the attention of Congress and of the country has been thoroughly aroused to the necessity of asserting and maintaining our right to the permanent neutralization of Samoa and the establishment of its autonomy on a firm foundation.

Mr. John Williams, the martyr missionary,

who claimed to be the first Englishman to visit the group, found the Samoans peculiarly susceptible to the influence and teachings of the missionaries, and he relates that in less than twenty months chapels were erected and the people ready and anxious for instruction. The islanders are now generally Christians by profession, and their consistency in practice is quite up to the standard of more civilized people. They are particularly rigid in their observance of Sunday, and cannot be induced to engage in any work on that day.

Nine years after the first visit of Williams,

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name of their ancestors, and of not handing it down to posterity pure and unspotted. His conclusion was that with instruction and civilization they would probably become a thriving people.

After the visit of Wilkes the attention of our Government was again attracted to the group by the report made by Commander Meade, United States Navy, of his agreement with the chief of Tutuila in 1872. About the same time the attention of President Grant was directed to Samoa by a report of an investigation of the resources of the islands by private individuals on the Pacific coast, and the result was the appointment of Colonel Steinberger as a special commissioner of the United States.

The commissioner sailed from San Francisco June 29, 1873, and on February 9, 1874, transmitted a long and interesting report covering the subject matter of his instructions.1

Having won the confidence not only of the natives but of the foreign residents, Steinberger returned to Samoa in a man-of-war in 1874 as a special agent of our Government, to serve without pay. He was the bearer of certain presents from our Government to the king of Samoa; and his instructions, dated December 11, 1874, expressly limited his functions "to 1 Ex. Doc. No. 161, H. R. 44 Cong., 1st Sess.

English; and our own consul being also hostile to him, the king was induced to ask his deportation, which was accomplished by a British man-of-war.

Among his papers, which were seized, was found a secret agreement with the German firm at Apia, which was used as evidence that he was acting in its interest. The causes of his losing influence have been the subject of much discussion, which is now of less interest than the existing situation.

It was after Steinberger's term that the treaties of 1878 and 1879 were made, and the present chapter of Samoan history began when first the German and then the American flag was raised, both acts being disavowed by the respective governments.

The agreement between Great Britain, Germany, and the United States that each should send to Samoa a confidential agent to make an investigation and report grew out of a suggestion of our Government for a conference at Washington between representatives of the three treaty powers. The proposition was accepted, with a modification, previously suggested by Germany, that before the conference each power should send a representative to investigate the political condition of the islands and report thereupon, with suggestions

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as to the best remedies for the troubles existing there. The essential basis of all negotiations, prior to that time and since, has been the preservation of Samoan autonomy; and the neutrality of the group was treated throughout as something which could not be interfered with without the violation of rights possessed by the Government of the United States and considered valuable enough to be maintained. After the German flag had been raised at Apia, under date of January 12, 1886, the Secretary of State telegraphed to our Minister at Berlin:

You will temperately but decidedly, in oral conference, notify the German Minister for Foreign Affairs that we expect nothing will be done to impair the rights of the United States under existing treaty with Samoa, and anticipated fulfillment of solemn assurances heretofore and recently given that Germany seeks no exclusive control in Samoa. In reply to this Count Bismarck said to Mr. Pendleton, January 16, 1886:

Whatever may have occurred, we intend to maintain the status as it has heretofore existed. We have been satisfied with that; it has been satisfactory to the three governments; we have neither interest nor desire to change it; but if we had, we would take no step, make no movement, without frankly consulting in advance the United States and Great Britain. If any wrong has been done, it shall be

righted and reparation shall be made, and nothing shall be allowed to change the relative positions of these governments.

In the same interview Mr. Pendleton said

"that the United States have a treaty with Samoa, antedating that of Germany or England, securing to their citizens great advantages in the way of trade and whatever further benefits might, at any time, be granted to the most favored nation, and would not look with composure on an attempt from any quarter whatsoever to interfere with the provisions of that treaty, or to acquire any exclusive rights or privileges of occupancy or trade." "To all of which," Mr. Pendleton writes, "Count Bismarck assented very appreciatively." The first suggestion of joint control by the three treaty powers was made by the Secretary of State in the dispatch to Mr. Pendleton, June 1, 1886, proposing the conference which contemplated absolute equality of action and control among the three powers. The proposition of a conference, and prior to it an investigation by the commissioners, was in the line of this purpose alone.

The instructions to the American commissioner, under date of July 22, 1886, after referring to the provisions and assurances of the

three powers," of their positive abstention from schemes of annexation or sole protection of the islands," proceeded to recognize that "the temporary situation in the islands may prove to be such as to require the joint effort of the treaty powers to preserve order and insure stable government, in which native interests should be under autonomous control." It is asserted that Each [power] has its treaty with the native Government, and their several rights run side by side, so that any predominance of one would clash with the interests of the others. This is admitted by the treaties themselves. Those of Germany and Great Britain each recognize the prior treaty with the United States, and both, by implication and in terms, bind those powers to respect it. This is especially true of the right to maintain coaling stations on the islands, which was first secured by the United States by their treaty of 1878, a portion of the harbor of Pago-Pago being set apart for the purpose. The British and German treaties followed with similar provisions, the former expressly recognizing the prior right of the United States in the premises by providing that their national stations should not encroach on that portion of the harbor already secured to the United States. We have here the principle of neutralization distinctly enunciated, and this circumstance has had an important influence on all that has since transpired. It is of special importance to the United States, for in no other part of Polynesia is a right of this nature possessed by them.

Under these circumstances and with these instructions I went to Samoa. Leaving San Francisco on the mail steamer July 31, 1886, I reached Tutuila on Sunday, August 15, having spent a night and a day at Honolulu. It was about noon when the island was reported, and very soon it rose out of the sea, lofty and precipitous and clad in a singularly beautiful garb of green, which was an agreeable surprise after having fed the imagination for a week upon the Bare and blackened appearance of the Hawaiian group. It was not long before I and my belongings were put over the side of the steamer and transferred to a small German schooner which had taken the place of the German mail cutter. The voyage of sixty miles from the westerly end of Tutuila to Apia occupied the afternoon and night. By daybreak we were sailing around the eastern end of Upolu, and as the dawn progressed the beautifully wooded slopes of the island, rising from the sea by gradual ascent to the height of four or five thousand feet, came out in bold relief. Before 8 o'clock we rounded the point at the entrance to the harbor, and as we slowly approached our anchorage there was ample time to observe the beauty of Apia, nestling under the hills and stretched along the shore in a semicircle from Matautu Point to Mulinuu, until recently the traditional seat of Samoan government.

The United States steamer Mohican had
VOL. XXXVIII.-5.

been ordered by cable to Auckland to meet me, and it was a disappointment not to find her at Tutuila. I learned later that she had been in Fiji, beyond the reach of the cable; and it was some time after my arrival before I had the satisfaction of seeing her steam into Apia. Meanwhile, in the absence of the consul, I found myself comfortably ensconced at the American consulate, taking my meals for a few days at the International Hotel, kept by an American. Afterwards, in view of its distance, I was fortunate enough to make an arrangement for meals nearer the consulate until the Mohican should arrive. The German officials have most excellent quarters, and Mr. Travers, the German special commissioner, was kind enough to invite me to take up my abode there, and the British consul and his wife also threw open their very attractive and comfortable house to me. Both these invitations, however, I was obliged to decline, as the acceptance of either would have given a false impression to the natives, who are easily affected by the most trifling circumstances.

On the morning of my arrival, after breakfasting at the hotel I started out in quest of the American consulate, and stopped to inquire the way at the store of an American merchant, to whom I had brought letters and messages from his friends in the United States. While talking with him, he suddenly turned and beckoned to a fine-looking native who was passing, saying to me at the same time, “Let me introduce you to the Secretary of State." It proved to be Mamea,1 who came to Washington in 1878, and who was a cosignatory with Mr. Evarts of the treaty between the United States and Samoa. I had already become somewhat accustomed to seeing the natives walking along the street with only a breech-cloth, or lava-lava, except that many of the women wore some loose garment about the shoulders; but it required a readjustment of preconceived ideas. to stand as I did, shaking hands with Mamea and observing a Secretary of State barefooted, bareheaded, with a loose doublet around his legs reaching to the knees, and a blouse or jacket, which, I afterwards observed, was rather characteristic of high officials, who usually wear either such a garment or a shirt hanging loose over the lava-lava. I found Mamea affable and intelligent and able to speak English moderately well. He walked with me to the consulate, near which I saw, flying from a flag-staff lashed to the top of a large tree in front of the Government building, the Samoan flag, and waving over it the little American flag which

terior; but it made little difference, as there was then 1 It turned out that he was really Secretary of the Innominal. practically an interregnum and the offices were merely

Consul Greenebaum had raised the May previous. Captain E. L. Hamilton, the American vice-consul, received me very courteously, as did also Mr. Travers, the German commissioner, on whom I called a little later. Captain Hamilton has resided in the islands over thirty years, has accumulated property there, and both personally and officially was a creditable representative of this country. His wife is a Samoan woman of high rank, very attractive in person and manners, whose hospitality is doubtless remembered by all Americans who have visited Apia within the last few years.

Soon after my arrival at Apia, the English commissioner, Mr. (now Sir John B.) Thurston, arrived, and he and Mr. Travers and I became absorbed in the investigation which was the object of our visit. Very soon after my arrival, though I had no official relation to the Government there, I made a call of courtesy upon the king and found him to be a man of fine personal appearance, with an intelligent and benignant countenance, and great dignity of bearing, which the extreme simplicity of his native dress did not lessen. Mr. Thurston also called upon the king, but Mr. Travers did not, giving as his reason the strained relations between the local German officials and Malietoa, which were afterwards made the pretext for a declaration of war by Germany against Malietoa personally. The king shortly afterwards made an appointment with Mr. Thurston and me to return our calls, and we received him together. I afterwards saw him frequently without any reason to change my opinion.

This king presents a figure humble but heroic. Monarchs of prouder name and more extended sway might emulate the singleness of heart with which he devoted himself to his one object in life — the good of his people. It was impossible to converse with him frequently without being deeply impressed by this as his leading characteristic. Conscious of his own limitations, but of extreme rectitude of purpose, he lent a willing ear to those who could unfold the better ways of higher civilization and adapt them to the growing needs of a people strong in native stock and promising in capability of development under stable government and enlightened contact; even his apparent vacillation at times, as he sought annexation or protection from one or other of the great powers, was due to a lofty preference for the welfare of his country at the expense of his own sovereignty. When at last confusion, disappointment, and treachery closed around him, Malietoa gave himself up, in the vain hope that the abnegation of all that made life dear, his personal hope of being the medium of reform and advancement to the Samoans, might spare them the cruelty

of further outrage and suffering. Calm, Christian, and in a certain sense statesmanlike, from his exile home in strange islands of the western Pacific, Malietoa Laupepa, the rightful and recognized king of Samoa, has a call upon our high consideration and active remembrance. Three other chiefs deserve special mention. Mataafa, since chosen king and surnamed Malietoa, was, during my visit, in the party of Tamasese, though the latter was his inferior both in lineage and capacity. Mataafa is a man of great force of character, as he has recently demonstrated to the world. He is, in common with many of his countrymen, a devout Roman Catholic, of which church there is a flourishing branch in Apia under the care of French missionaries. In my report, since published, I referred to Mataafa in connection with a prediction which I ventured to make that the recognition of Tamasese would result in immediate divisions among his followers as to future leadership. Seumana was the governor or head chief of the Tuamasaga district, in which Apia is situated. He seemed to me, taking in the whole range of physical, mental, and moral attributes, a man of as fine nature as can be produced anywhere. The highest civilization has not revealed a more attractive picture of domestic happiness than that of Seumana and his wife, Faatolia, and their baby. In the stirring time prior to Malietoa's deportation Faatolia was, probably with truth, suspected of being a medium of communication between Apia and her friends in the bush. Consequently she was taken to the German barracks and placed under a guard, who are said to have refused to permit her to go out of their sight, even under the most extreme necessity.

Asi was the great war chief on the side of Malietoa. Having a physical frame unsurpassed by any I have ever seen, he was at times as gentle in manner as a woman. He conversed with fluency and force and emphasized his words with the right forefinger extended, which often came down upon a table in front of him with a force which made one tremble to think what would be the power of his uplifted arm with club or ax in battle. Asi's daughter, Faapeia, was the most graceful and beautiful Samoan dancing girl, with a figure which might excite the envy of any woman. She never moved about without a train of attendants, and in this style frequently visited the American ships and danced for the amusement of the officers. At the time of greatest stress she was asked to dance on the German ship, and her father refused to allow it. Her dancing in the United States ship Adams immediately after made the German officers very angry, and soon afterwards Asi was deported. The other native chief whom I specially recall

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