Matahina

I agonized over writing the story of Matahina in Chapters 7 and 8 of my book God’s Grace was Sufficient. So much controversy surrounds the events of her life after she arrives in Hawaii with her husband. The story in my book is taken from Lucy’s account as she wrote in her book. But Lucy Thurston’s account of Matahina’s life is quite different from all the other accounts.

Hiram Bingham, William Ellis, and George Bennet all write in rather vague terms that Matahina disgraced herself and ran off with the captain of the Mermaid. This is in contrast to Lucy Thurston’s writings, which say that Matahina was kidnapped by the captain and the sailors and  held prisoner to do their bidding for several weeks aboard their ship.

There were many eye witnesses to this event, but I chose to limit the introduction of new characters in my book to only those who were needed for the story: William Ellis, Matahina and her husband, Ari. But in fact there was another Tahitian Christian couple who were planning to start a new mission in the Marquesas Islands with Matahina and Ari. 

Two men from the London Missionary Society also joined them: Rev. Daniel Tyerman and George Bennet. These two British men had been sent to visit the missions in the South Seas and send progress reports back to the Society. So seven Christians in all sailed from Tahiti to Hawaii.

Lucy tells a detailed version of Matahina’s abduction and forced slavery to the captain and the sailors. I decided to include Matahina’s story as reported by Lucy since my book is Lucy’s story, and that’s what she said about it.

The other witnesses who wrote memoirs lay the blame for the event at Matahina’s feet; they describe her running off with the captain as “an unspeakable scandal” and “unbelievable.” Perhaps the truth of the event was so difficult for them to accept; the actions of the white captain and his sailors were so horrific, that it was easier to blame the victim of the crime and say very little about the details.  Surely the term ‘sex slave’ had not yet entered their vocabulary. The captain and the sailors held great power, and as Lucy says, the value of the olive-complected women was very low.

Lucy, in her writings, gives the names of the men from the London Missionary Society and William Ellis, but she does not name any of the Tahitians or the captain. Other sources give the Captain’s name as Kent.

I did not discover the actual names of the Tahitians until I read The Providential Life and Heritage of Henry Obookiah by Christopher L. Cook. I was shocked to discover that Matahina’s actual name was Matatorewahine. If you take the first four letters of her actual name, and combine them with the final four letters, you get a name very close to Matahina! I credit God for leading me to choose the name Matahina from a list of historical Tahitian female names. 

Throughout history, countless unnamed women have been forced into sexual slavery. Matahina is one of many. My motivation in telling her story was to honor her memory and to clear up the confusion regarding her life story. I believe that honoring her memory may have been God’s goal, too, as He led me to choose a name similar to her own. 

I will copy the text of Lucy’s account of Matahina’s life below. 

The Wife of the Tahitian Missionary, by Lucy Thurston.

The London Missionary Society sent out a deputation of two gentlemen, Rev. Daniel Tyerman and George Bennet, Esq., to visit their Missions in the South Seas. While there, two converted Tahitians and their wives of high standing in the church, were set apart as missionaries to the three destitute islands of the Marquesas.

Mr. Ellis, their pastor, and the deputation wished to accompany and see them established in their new field. A very obliging sea-captain, bound to the Sandwich Islands, engaged to take and set them down at the Marquesas, but the wind proving unpropitious, he deferred going there until his return voyage.

Thus it was that they became the welcome guests of the Mission House, at Honolulu. The Ta- hitian missionaries, with their simple piety, were received with no less interest. And although they were not accommodated at the Mission House, our terms of intercourse were intimate, affectionate and confiding.

The captain of the party, too, was introduced to us as a man of high moral principles, who had been to them a brother. He was young, amiable, and cultivated. Nothing was more natural, while he lay in port, than that he made himself familiar at the Mission House. Sometimes he sat with us at the family board, oftener made social calls.

During the day our numerous family branched off as duty or inclination led. When evening hushed the cares of life, some dozen of us assembled in the sitting-room to enjoy the high privilege of social intercourse. On a certain evening, the day was being thus delightfully crowned, thought eliciting thought, with an ease and freedom which English courtesy exhibited and encouraged, — when we were startled by a loud knock at the door.

One of the Tahitian missionaries had come with the astounding intelligence that their own captain, with a band of his sailors, had just been to their house, and from before his eyes, had borne away his wife to his ship. To the panic- stricken husband, there was no redress. The thing must take its course. Law had not then raised its powerful arm in the nation. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes, and looked his neighbor straight in the face.

On that dark and black night, standing aghast at the revelation of such fearful villainy, within our own trusted circle. I turned to my husband and asked, “What protection have I against being carried off in like manner?” He replied, “You have none.” Then I remembered with dismay, that only two days before, that same captain leisurely spent hours in the afternoon at the Mission House, and as a natural thing invited me to walk on the plain. It was one of the daily duties of us ladies to walk for health, but never without an escort. We had perfect confidence in him, and yet I declined, I hardly know why.

The next morning Mr. Ellis visited the ship, and when he asked the woman to go ashore, she replied. “The captain will not let me.” There were two hackneyed expressions in those years, which have become obsolete. The one was, that “These islands lay at the end of the earth,” The other, that “Men who visited them left their con sciences at Cape Horn.”

After a season, the Tahitian missionary’s wife was graciously permitted to return to her husband. The pastor, alive to her interests, said to me, “She is bent on spending the days abroad in the fields. She seems to be somewhat partially demented. Do go and speak to her words of comfort.” I found her on the plains, with a square covering drawn tightly around the whole length of her person, and her chin resting low on her chest. She was roaming about, she knew not, and she cared not whither. She neither wished to see, nor speak to any one. Desolation and despair had taken fast hold of her soul. A blight had fallen upon her whole being.

Instead of an early opportunity of returning, our English and Tahitian friends were unexpectedly detained more than four months. Then that captain and that vessel were ready for sea. Our friends, as travelers, did the best they could, embraced the only opportunity that offered for a return, entered the same vessel, under the same captain, that brought them here. The ill-assorted inmates were shut up to themselves, and sailed away together.

The sole object for which those three English gentlemen projected the voyage, was quashed. A visit to the Marquesas, and there establishing a Mission, was necessarily given up. No thanks to transgressors that other benevolent plans employed their activities.

On the passage back, a woman died. Under the auspices of the captain, the remains were sewed up in a strong canvas, weighted with two eighteen pound balls, and committed to the deep, with Christian rites. It was the corpse of the crushed wife of the Tahitian missionary.

She was born in idolatry, and hers was a checkered life. Her pastor was with her in her last hours, and hoped she sought and found mercy. The bereaved husband returned to his old home, a three-fold mourner; the loss of his wife, the defection of her character, and his total failure in the mission to which he had been appointed.

In a public journal, a volume of 500 pages, in progress at that period, and given to the world in 1831, cognizance was taken of this affair. The wife of the Tahitian missionary was called by name. She was compared to the woman who was a sinner. She was spoken of as having brought disgrace on herself, and occasioned much grief to her Christian relatives and friends. The captain passed on with an unsullied reputation. And, in consequence of his attentions to his passengers to and from the Sandwich Islands, he was presented with six large hogs, a great number of cocoanuts, some breadfruits, and other presents of native growth arid manufacture.

Thus the reputation of those two individuals are even now sailing down the stream of time. And this is a specimen of the manner in which the scale was poised between civilized man and olive complexioned woman in these Pacific Seas, in the former part of the 19th century. Wise men did it, who knew the times and saw the phase of public opinion, and who sat first in the kingdom as journalists and editors.