“were in general low and immoral to a disgusting degree....  Awfully dark, indeed, was their moral character, and notwithstanding the apparent mildness of their disposition, and the cheerful vivacity of their conversation, no portion of the human race was ever, perhaps, sunk lower in brutal licentiousness and moral degradation than this isolated people” (87).

He also describes the Areois (I., 185-89) as “privileged libertines,” who travelled from place to place giving improper dances and exhibitions, “addicted to every kind of licentiousness,” and “spreading a moral contagion throughout society,” Yet they were “held in the greatest respect” by all classes of the population.  They had their own gods, who were “monsters in vice,” and “patronized every evil practice perpetrated during such seasons of public festivity.”

Did the white sailors also give the Tahitians their idea of Tahitian dances, and professional Areois, and corrupt gods?  Did they teach them customs which Hawkesworth, himself a sailor, and accustomed to scenes of low life, said “no imagination could possibly conceive?” Did the European whites teach these natives to regard men as ra (sacred) and women as noa (common)?  Did they teach them all those other customs and atrocities which the following paragraphs reveal?

HEARTLESS TREATMENT OF WOMEN

It can be shown that quite apart from their sensuality, the Tahitians were too coarse and selfish to be able to entertain any of those refined sentiments of love which the sentimentalists would have us believe prevailed before the advent of the white man.

Love is often compared to a flower; but love cannot, like a flower, grow on a dunghill.  It requires a pure, chaste soul, and it requires the fostering sunshine of sympathy and adoration.  To a Tahitian a woman was merely a toy to amuse him.  He liked her as he liked his food and drink, or his cool plunge into the waves, for the reason that she pleased his senses.  He could not feel sentimental love for her, since, far from adoring her, he did not even respect or well-treat her.  Ellis (I., 109) relates that

“The men were allowed to eat the flesh of the pig, and of fowls, and a variety of fish, cocoanuts, and plantains, and whatever was presented as an offering to the gods; these the females, on pain of death, were forbidden to touch, as it was supposed they would pollute them.  The fires at which the men’s food was cooked were also sacred, and were forbidden to be used by the females.  The baskets in which their provision was kept, and the house in which the men ate, were also sacred, and prohibited to the females under the same cruel penalty.  Hence the inferior food, both for wives, daughters, etc., was cooked at separate fires, deposited in distinct baskets, and eaten in lonely solitude by the females, in little huts erected for the purpose.”