These latter islands, 30° south of where we were then, are inhabited
by a race of people whose language is very similar to that spoken by
the natives of the Sandwich Islands. They are probably descendants of
one common stock. But they are naturally more fierce and savage than
the Sandwich Islanders. It is said of some of them, that when they are
engaged in war, they have no objections to eating a piece of a roasted
man; indeed, they rather relish such a meal at such times, as they
think it makes them brave.
Our president's principal motive in coming to see us was to have us go
with him. If prospects were no better on Maui than on the island he had
been on, he thought we should accompany him. It was not from any fear
that the people of the Marquesas group would eat us, that we did not
fall in with his proposal; but because we could not see the propriety
of it.
Our position, just then, was a peculiar one. Here was our president,
the man who had been appointed to counsel and guide us, proposing to
us to leave the field to which we had been appointed, and to take a
journey of several hundred miles to another land to labor. What were
we to do? How far did the obedience which we owed to him require us to
go? This was an important question. To disobey a man in the rightful
exercise of authority, was an act from which we naturally recoiled; and
an act, too, of which we were not in the least disposed to be guilty.
But we felt that it would not be right for us to leave that island then.
We had done but little at warning the people, or accomplishing our
mission, and why leave them then, any more than on the first day that
we landed? We had not been appointed by the authority, which called him
and us, to go to the Marquesas Islands; we knew of no opening there, or
of any reason why we should go there in preference to any other place
on the earth. If we followed our president there, because he told us to
come with him, and we should find no opening to preach the gospel, why
not follow him to some other country if he should so require us?
Fortunately we were relieved from the necessity of refusing to comply
with his counsel. He felt plainly enough that his proposal did not
strike us favorably. He had not been many hours with us until he found
this out; and he told us that probably it would be better for us to
remain where we were until we gave the people a fair trial; and then,
if we could not do anything, we could follow him, as he intended to
write to us respecting his success. The first we heard from him, he
had drifted down to Tahiti, on the Society Islands, where some of our
Elders were then laboring. His mission, however, was of no profit to
himself.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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