Tahiti discovered: News reaches Rome. Unrecorded.
[Tahiti] / Louis-Antoine de Bougainville. Relazione Della Scoperta recentemente fatta dal Sig. Bougainville di un’ Isola, alla quale ha dato il nome Nuova Citera. Rome: s.n., 1769 (“In Roma MDCCLXIX. )( Con Lic. De’ Sup.”). 4to [26.4 x 17.8 cm], [2] ff. on laid paper, no watermark. Disbound bifolium, folds and trimming of inner margin indicate that the piece formerly was sewn into an octavo-size composite volume. Minor staining and toning.
Unrecorded 1769 Italian report announcing the ‘discovery’ of Tahiti (“Nuova Citera”) by Louis-Antoine de Bougainville (1729-1811), an event of tremendous importance both to the inhabitants of that island and to Europeans who would come to imagine Tahiti a Romantic unspoiled paradise.
The text is a translation of the famous French announcement published in Paris with its ‘permis d’imprimer’ dated 20 July 1769 (Relation de la découverte que vient de faire Mr. de Bouguainville, d’une isle qu’il a nommée la Nouvelle Cythere), which appeared shortly after Bougainville’s return to France. There were also two other editions of the French Relation, one dated 1 August and the other undated (see O’Reilly, Bibliographie de Tahiti et de la Polynésie française, nos. 275-77).
There exists another Italian version of this announcement (O’Reilly, no. 279), but it is an entirely separate translation, differing significantly in wording and orthography from the unrecorded relazione offered here. Both the French original and the other Italian version are very rare.
The contents of the ‘Newsletter’ are well known (see L. Davis Hammond’s facsimile and English translation of the French letter in the James Ford Bell Library, which I quote at length below). The text discusses the islanders’ physical appearance, language, food, music & dance, religion, political structure, flora & fauna, etc.
“About two years after the Newsletter, Bougainville published his official account of the voyage, Voyage autour du monde, par le frégate du Roi La Boudeuse, et la flute l’Etoile. [In it], the Tahiti visit was placed in a more subdued light, but the Frenchmen who read the Relation of 1769 Tahiti represented a paradise of natural life far from the complexities of European civilization” (J. Parker, in Hammond, p.l. [iii v.]). The sentiment was no doubt shared by the Romans who read the translation in the Relazione offered here.
News still traveled slowly in those days, and it was only later that most interested parties would learn that Samuel Wallis (1728-95) had, in fact, landed on Tahiti several months earlier than Bougainville.
This 1769 Relazione Della Scoperta recentemente fatta dal Sig. Bougainville di un’ Isola, alla quale ha dato il nome Nuova Citera is not located by OPAC/SBN/ICCU, OCLC, or KVK, nor is it to be found in O’Reilly’s Bibliographie de Tahiti et de la Polynésie française or any other Tahiti literature that I have consulted.
*Patrick O’Reilly and Édouard Reitman, Bibliographie de Tahiti et de la Polynésie française; L. Davis Hammond, ed., Relation de la découverte que vient de faire Mr. de Bouguainville, d’une îsle qu’il a nommée la Nouvelle Cythere; News from New Cythera: A Report of Bougainville’s Voyage, 1766-1769; Michel Bideaux and Sonia Faessel, eds., Louis-Antoine de Bougainville, Voyage autour du mond.
Excerpt of English translation:
(From L. D. Hammond, ed., News from New Cythera: A Report of Bougainville’s Voyage, 1766-1769, pp. 21-30):
“Between the Straits of Magellan and Batavia, latitude ***** (it has not been possible to learn it, since Mr. de Bougainville, before leaving, ordered that no information on this subject be given out), these two ships of the king discovered an ISLAND, unanimously named by the officers New Cythera. The climate of this island is mild and temperate, the air is pure and serene, and the sky there is very lovely. The island’s inhabitants are very tall; the men are from six to six and a half feet tall, and the women are nearly the same size. These islanders are white, and their race is handsome. The women particularly are distinguished by the regularity of their features, their gentleness, and their natural affability. Both sexes have very beautiful teeth, and hair of different colors, like Europeans. The men let their beards grow; they wear a poncho or a sort of dalmatic of white bark which they weave and card themselves. They wear neither shoes nor pants, and go about bareheaded. The women are covered from the neck to the feet with a great veil made of very fine white bark. They are very hospitable, very gracious, and quick to caress. When they met one of the officers, or anyone else from the ships’ crews, they went up to them and by song and demonstrative gesture expressed their joy; they would then take by the hand and envelop in their veil the European whom they had so wonderfully greeted. The husbands considered these signs of tenderness for their wives [that the Europeans then tendered] as a homage and an honor; these women are free of any base interest, and all their ambition is satisfied by a pendant or a cuff link which they attach to their ears. They are extremely loving to their children […]
“These people have not yet known any commerce or trade; they have little canoes which are rather poorly constructed and badly joined together, for up until this discovery they had no idea of nails, caulking, and pitch. They use these canoes to do their fishing. In addition to their king, they have twelve chiefs. This king has no mark of distinction, unless it be that his cabin is a bit more spacious; and his sovereignty is hereditary. The soil of this vast country produces sugarcane naturally: but these people know neither how to use it, nor what it is. The land is fit for all the plants and produce of our islands of South America. The fruit which serves as their bread is the size of a melon, weighing from two to ten pounds; it is red inside, and tastes very good; they knead it with water and make of it a dough which is as nourishing a substance as bread, and which can be kept fresh for five or six months. On this island there are also plantains, much better than those from Saint Domingue and from Martinique: some of these are about as thick as a thigh. The islanders raise pigs, goats, and chickens, which are about the same there as in Europe; they eat their meat roasted over coals, or boiled; their only drink is coconut milk, or water, which, according to the analysis made of it by the physician-naturalist, is much lighter than ours.
“They eat and drink whenever hunger and thirst call, and have no set hours for their meals; they eat seated on mats of reed and drink from coconut shells. Their food, as has already been said, consists of grilled or boiled meat, and of fish which they catch with hooks of mother- of-pearl and with baskets or nets more or less like those of our fishermen; their food is served in dishes made of coconut shell.
“On this island there are many very rare, very beautiful, and very curious birds, among which there is the Lory, whose plumage is variegated with the most beautiful and brilliant colors. There are parrots of every kind and of every color: one kind is the size of a wren with feathers of the loveliest royal blue and a very long tail. The cockatoo, or Pitacus-albus, is a parrot, white like a swan, with a large black beak, and on the back as well as under the neck he has a tuft of feathers, like a reversed crest, of a pretty light yellow […]“The houses of these islanders are oblong, 35 or 40 feet long, and 15 or 16 feet wide; they are made of large reeds. The roofs of these cabins slope inwards; they are made of mats of reeds so tightly joined and so perfectly tied that neither rain nor the sun’s heat can penetrate them. The air on this island is very pure and very healthy: the men afflicted with scurvy were cured there in five days. There are many simples, plants, and trees which promote good health; among these there is cardamine, a great antidote to scurvy. The physician-naturalist aboard the frigate has brought back a complete collection of these medicinal plants as well as collections of birds, dried fish, shells, and other curious rarities; some naturalists have even come down from Paris to Rochefort to see them.
“The islanders are ignorant about medicine and about the use of drugs and remedies; they bleed themselves when they are sick by scarification of the same veins as we do, making ligatures with strips of bark; they prick themselves with a piece of pointed mother-of-pearl, which serves as a lancet. They know about medicinal plants and use them against sickness, especially against the venereal diseases, which are common there and which are the same as those here in France.
“The New Cytherians speak an unknown language which is quite limited; it cannot be compared to any other language or jargon. Their word for woman is ainé or oyné, for chicken they say moé, for bread they say memi, and for pig ouan-rouen. The islanders live in peace among themselves, and know neither hatred, quarrels, dissension, nor civil war; they have no offensive or defensive weapons [...] On this island there are no lions, leopards, or tigers, nor are there any other savage beasts, snakes, or poisonous animals. These people are by nature vivacious and gay; their only musical instrument is a sort of flute, made of a reed called bamboo, which they play with their noses, and which makes quite an agreeable sound. They dance naturally and without any set order [...]
“There are no titles of property among these islanders: all the wealth and everything produced on this island are communal. The two ships left in New Cythera axes and other kinds of utensils, nails, locks, and pieces of iron of all kinds. After the islanders had seen what use a nail could be put to, they would give a pig in exchange for a single one; they would offer chickens and fruits in profusion for the smallest scraps of iron which they found so useful in holding their canoes together.“The New Cytherians know nothing of the duration or of the origin of their existence, and, caring little about the past, concern themselves only with the present [...] They haven’t any knowledge whatsoever of writing or of the letters. Mr. de Bousagne, ensign on the Boudeuse, who has a great facility with languages, noticed that one of these islanders could pronounce the letters of our alphabet with great ease."