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 STUDIES IN
CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH

Life Narratives and

Youth Culture
Representation, Agency and Participation

Kate Douglas and Anna Poletti

Studies in Childhood and Youth
This series offers a multi-disciplinary perspective on exploring childhood
and youth as social phenomena that are culturally located, articulating
children’s and young people’s perspectives on their everyday lives. The
aim of the series will be to continue to develop these theoretical perspec-
tives through publishing both monographs and edited collections that
present cutting-edge research within the area of childhood studies. It will
provide a key locus for work within the field that is currently published
across a diverse range of outlets and will help consolidate and develop
childhood studies as a discrete field of scholarship.

More information about this series at

http://www.springer.com/series/14474
 Kate Douglas • Anna Poletti

Life Narratives and

Youth Culture
Representation, Agency and Participation
Kate Douglas
Flinders University
Adelaide, Australia

Anna Poletti
Monash University
Clayton, Australia
Utrecht University
Utrecht, The Netherlands

Studies in Childhood and Youth

ISBN 978-1-137-55116-0    ISBN 978-1-137-55117-7 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-55117-7

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016957998

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016

The author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identified as the author(s) of this work in accordance
with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether
the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of
illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and trans-
mission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or
dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication
does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant
protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book
are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or
the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any
errors or omissions that may have been made.

Cover image © Tim Gainey / Alamy Stock Photo

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

The registered company is Macmillan Publishers Ltd. London
The registered company address is: The Campus, 4 Crinan Street, London, N1 9XW, United Kingdom
 Acknowledgements

An earlier version of sections of the Introduction (Chap. 1) was pub-

lished as “Rethinking ‘Virtual’ Youth: Young People and Life Writing”
in Mediated Youth Cultures, Andy Griffiths and Brady Robards (eds).
New York: Palgrave. 77–94. A version of Chap. 4 was published as “Ethical
Dialogues: Youth, Memoir, Trauma” in a/b: Auto/Biography Studies 30.2
(2015): 271–288.
Materials from the Introduction and Chap. 6 were presented as con-
ference papers at International Auto/Biography Association Conference,
Australian National University (2012). Materials from Chaps. 4 and 7 were
presented at the International Auto/Biography Association Conference,
Banff (2014). Material from Chap. 8 was presented at the Auto/Biography
Association Americas Chapter Conference, Ann Arbor (2015).
We would like to acknowledge the supportive and rigorous environ-
ment of the International Auto/Biography Association, where many ele-
ments of this project were first explored. We thank our colleagues who
provided generous feedback on our presentations and support for the
project. We want to particularly thank Sarah Brophy, Kylie Cardell,
Leigh Gilmore, Craig Howes, Claire Lynch, Laurie McNeill, Aimée
Morrison, Julie Rak, Candida Rifkind, Sidonie Smith, Julia Watson,
Gillian Whitlock and John Zuern, who offered critique, useful advice
and tips that have proven invaluable to the project. The work of these
scholars has provided inspiration throughout.
v
vi Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the reviewers of the manuscript for their con-
sidered engagement with the project and its aims, and the staff at Palgrave
Macmillan, particularly Harriet Barker, for their support for the project.
Anna would like to thank Kate for proposing this collaboration, for
her generous questioning and her commitment to ethical scholarship.
Thank you to the archivists whose knowledge, expertise and patience
were fundamental to the research that informs this book: Lisa Darms
and Rachel Greer at the Fales Library at New York University, and Jenna
Freedman and Shannon O’Neill at Barnard College Library. Thanks also
to the artists who granted permission for their work to be reproduced:
Kathleen Hanna, Miriam Basilio, Emma D, Jami Sailor and Amanda. My
work on this project has benefited enormously from conversations with
and provocations from Paul Byron, Catherine Strong, Sara Rosa Espi,
Luke Sinclair, Shane McGrath, Thomas Blatchford, Jon Dale, Lauren
Berlant and Julie Rak. The support of my colleagues at Monash has been
vital; thank you to Ali Alizadeh, Robin Gerster, Sue Kossew, Melinda
Harvey and Simone Murray. Thanks must also go to the Faculty of Arts
at Monash University for financial support for this project.
A final thank you must go to Johannes Klabbers, who wrote his own
book alongside this one.
Kate would like to thank Anna for being a wonderful collaborator, and
generous and inspirational colleague throughout the development of this
project. Thank you to the Faculty of Education, Humanities and Law at
Flinders University for their financial support of this project. Thank you
to my Flinders colleagues and/or members of the Flinders Life Narrative
Research Group who have acted as readers, listened to presentations
or provided general encouragement along the way: Kylie Cardell, Lisa
Bennett, Pamela Graham, Tully Barnett, Emma Maguire, Hannah Kent,
Threasa Meads, Amy Matthews, Erin Sebo and Patrick Allington.
Finally, thank you to my partner Danni and to my children Ella, Josh
and Darcy who always provide the right dose of inspiration, distraction
and encouragement.
 Contents

Part I Young Writers and Life Narrative Encounters    1

1 Introduction   3
Youth, Life Narrative and the Self(ie)    3
“Youth” and Young People: A Note on Terminology    9
Life Narrative as a Literary Form and Cultural Practice   11
Making Visible Young People’s Contribution to the Archive
of Life Writing: Three Spaces of Youth Life Writing   14
Private Written Forms  14
Public Literary Forms   19
Young People, Media and Identity   21
Life Narratives and Youth Cultures: Representation Agency
and Participation  25
A Brief Note on Method and the Ethics of Studying Youth   29

2 Youth and Revolutionary Romanticism: Young Writers

Within and Beyond the Literary Field  33
The Risky Business of Youth Life Narrative   34
Bourdieu and the Role of Generations in the Literary Field   37
The Contemporary Hierarchy of Genres: The Status of Life
Writing  44
vii
viii Contents

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius: Masculine

Position-Taking and Literary Revolution   48
Race, Class, Youth and the Literary Field: Gangsta Rap and
gangsta Memoir  56
Conclusion  59

Part II Writing War   61

3 War Diaries: Representation, Narration and Mediation  63

Children Writing the Holocaust: Youth and the Diary Form   65
Children of the Holocaust (1995); We Are Witnesses (1995);
and Salvaged Pages (2002)  70
Conclusion  87

4 Lost Boys: Child Soldier Memoirs and the Ethics of

Reading  89
Trauma and Ethical Scholarship   91
Life Writings of Trauma: African Child Soldier Memoirs   94
Mediated but Radical? Emmanuel Jal’s War Child  98
The Ethic of Verification: Ishmael Beah’s A Long Way Gone 105
Memoir, Trauma and Youth: Towards an Ethics of
Scholarship 113

Part III Girlhoods Interrupted 119

5 The Riot Grrrl Epistolarium 121

Riot Grrrl: The Convergence of Youth, Gender and
Cultural Production  122
Letters as Life Writing  126
What Letters Can Tell Us About Riot Grrrl  127
Archiving Riot Grrrl: Positioning the Epistolarium  130
 Contents ix

The Riot Grrrl Epistolarium  133

First Contact  135
Fan Grrrls  139
The Work of Articulation: Letters Between Friends  142
The Problem of Intimacy for/in Young Women’s Feminism  146

6 Impossible Subjects: Addiction and Redemption in

Memoirs of Girlhood 149
The “Bad Girls” of Memoir  149
Positioning “the Girl”  153
The Girl, the Memoir  157
Koren Zailckas: Smashed 158
Fury 167
Conclusion: Making the Impossible Subject Possible  171

Part IV Youth Publics 175

7 Zine Culture: A Youth Intimate Public 177

Zines: An Analogue Network  180
Materiality and Mediation: Reading Zine Culture as
a Public  181
Evidencing a World Online: The We Make Zines Ning  189
An Intimate Public: A Scene of Consolation and Discipline  190
Conclusion: Hope and the Juxtapolitical  200

8 Youth Activism Online: Publics, Practices and Archives 203

Malala Yousafzai  204
Gul Makai  208
Isadora Faber  214
Life Narrative and Participation: Controversy and Control  218
Conclusion 223
x Contents

9 Conclusion: Youth, Agency and Self-­Representation:

What Cultural Work Can Life Writing Do? 225

Works Cited 233

Index 259
 List of Figures

Fig. 5.1 Extract from a letter to Tammy Rae Carland from Miriam Basilio
(The Fales Library Riot Grrrl Collection, New York University.
Tammy Rae Carland “I (heart) Amy Carter” Riot Grrrl
Collection MSS 290, Series I Correspondence. Reproduced
with permission from the author) 142
Fig. 5.2 Letter from Kathleen Hanna to Johanna Fateman (The Fales
Library Riot Grrrl Collection, New York University. Johanna
Fateman Collection MSS 258, Series III Correspondence.
Reproduced with permission from the author) 144
Fig. 7.1 Excerpt from the zine Nearly Healthy (2010) by Emma D
(Reproduced with permission from the author) 193
Fig. 7.2 Excerpt from the zine Your Secretary #4 (n.d.) by Jami Sailor
(Reproduced with permission from the author) 197

xi
 Part I
Young Writers and Life Narrative
Encounters
 1
Introduction

Youth, Life Narrative and the Self(ie)

In December 2013, the New York Post ran a front-page story titled “Selfie-
ish: My Selfie with Brooklyn Bridge suicide dude.” A young woman had
apparently taken a photograph of herself in front of a suicidal man on
the bridge. The “selfie,” a now ubiquitous term and practice, refers to a
photograph taken of oneself, usually taken with a mobile device, posted
on social media sites (such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Tumblr,
etc.) which invites response from friends of followers.1 As many com-
mentators have noted, the term selfie is most often associated with the
photographs teenage girls post of themselves on social media sites as a
means for asserting agency and participating within culture (Hall 2013;
Harrod 2009; Losse 2013; Murphy 2013).
In the Brooklyn Bridge case, conveniently, someone was on hand to
snap a photo of the woman taking the photo. The New York Post’s story
went viral across mainstream and social media and wide condemnation

1
The term “selfie” was the Oxford Dictionaries’ word of the year for 2013; the term increased in
usage by 17,000% during 2013 (Freeland 2013).

© The Author(s) 2016 3

K. Douglas, A. Poletti, Life Narratives and Youth Culture,
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-55117-7_1
4 Life Narratives and Youth Culture

followed.2 The media condemnation was levelled at the nameless woman,

but more vehemently at the wider culture of narcissism and self-obsession
that this woman came to symbolise. According to such commentary, this
modern age is turning many young people into heartless egomaniacs,
obsessed with their own photographic images and narratives.
There are a range of exaggerations and misconceptions here that pro-
vide inspiration for our inquiry in this book. First, let us start with the
idea that photographic self-portraiture is a new phenomenon. It simply
is not: self-portraiture has a long and varied history from daguerreotype
self-portraits of the nineteenth century, through to the many different
types of portable cameras (i.e. with timers) which emerged in the twenti-
eth century. The digital, portable camera has, in the past decade, found a
home in the omnipresent (and now with forward-facing option) mobile
phone camera. The photographic methods of using a mirror or an out-
stretched arm or hand to capture a self-portrait were practised through-
out the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, just as they are now.
Second is the suggestion of a crisis in youth self-representation. Self-
representation cannot simply be dismissed or explained away through
accusations of superficiality and narcissism. As many cultural commenta-
tors have noted (in relation to the selfie and more particularly the New
York Post example) selfies are also an act of socialisation; they reflect a
desire for social and cultural participation and connection, for visibil-
ity and affirmation (Jones 2013; Freeland 2013). Sharing selfies can also
provide an opportunity to take control of one’s self-image (e.g. consider
Instagram’s filtering and editing tools or Snapchat’s timed snaps).
But contemporary cultures, particularly in the Western domains of
the global north, have a deeply contradictory relationship with young
people engaging in public modes of self-representation, as Jonathan Jones
(2013) notes: “like so many cultural phenomena into which millions
throw themselves can be seen on the one hand, modern, democratic,
liberating instruments of progress and yet on the other hand, with equal
2
Jonathan Jones (2013) is suspicious of the timeliness and good quality of the photograph taken of
the woman taking the selfie. He raises the possibility of the whole incident being a sensationalist
“set up” to play on the notion that this is “the worst” of a broader social problem. The so-called bad
taste selfie is a wider phenomenon. For example, there is a well-known Tumblr blog “selfies at
funerals.” The Brooklyn Bridge selfie photographer was never publicly named perhaps because she
was only ever intended to be symbolic of a wider cultural concern.
 1 Introduction 5

validity, as time-eating cybermats of the apocalypse.” Of course, the cor-

porate powers which heavily influence the cultural practices of young
people play a significant role in such perceptions. But the good/bad, pro-
ductive/time-wasting binaries suggested here are not useful, and as Jones
argues, high-profile public examples of self-representation gone bad—
like the Brooklyn Bridge selfie-taker—become a convenient scapegoat for
the ambivalent and often confused responses that critics have to young
people’s cultural agency and use of social media. These debates run con-
currently with broader cultural discussions around, and constructions of,
childhood innocence, and link into cultural anxieties and moral panics
around the need to protect children and youth from danger and harm
(Cockburn 2012; James and Prout 1990; James 2009).
Third is the prevalent misconception that there is something new and
unusual about a young person wanting to share his or her life story with
a public. While technologies have made self-representation much more
accessible, prevalent and popular, self-representation, through varied
cultural modes, has been happening for as long as people have lived.
Scholarship in life writing studies, sociology, anthropology and cogni-
tive science argues that self-representation and the telling of stories from
life are powerful components of and drivers of human communities and
cultures.3 What differs across time and context is the extent to which the
writing practice is self-directed—a private activity where the process is
driven by the need for self-understanding in the individual—or public-
directed, where a life writer records their life and what they see around
them with a real or imagined audience in mind. When considering how
a specific life writing text engages with privacy and publicness, we need to
think of these states existing on a continuum, rather than in a binary. As
we discuss further below and explore throughout this book, the audiences
for life writing are incredibly varied: they can be small and localised,
broad yet historically specific, or may be as grand as the historical record.
The communicative intention in life writing is thus wide and diverse,
and requires careful attention from the critic: life writers may bear wit-
ness to the life of others and to history, intervene in their community’s
3
See, for example, Paul John Eakin’s (1999) engagement with cognitive science and theories of
identity in How Our Lives Becomes Stories, and Kenneth Plummer’s (2001) analysis of “the sociol-
ogy of stories” in Telling Sexual Stories: Power, Change and Social Worlds.
6 Life Narratives and Youth Culture

dominant understanding of experience, offer themselves as representative

subjects or speak for marginalised communities. This intention is then
complicated by the contexts in which a text is circulated, where editorial
intervention, paratexts and republication for new markets bring the text
into different sites of reception.
Seen in this context, young people have not emerged as prolific life
storytellers simply because of mobile technologies; we argue, and will
show in this book, that young people have made a consistent and sig-
nificant contribution to various first-person genres throughout literary
and cultural histories. Allison James (2011) notes that “one of the most
important theoretical developments in the recent history of childhood
studies [has been] the shift to seeing children as social actors” (p. 34).
Their contributions to culture are worthy of study in their own right.
However, childhood and youth studies scholarship has highlighted a ten-
dency for childhood and youth experience to be homogenised, which
often denies diversity and individuality of childhood experiences (James
and James 2004; James and Christensen 2007; Liebel 2012). We want to
show the ways that life writing texts have represented diverse experiences
of youth over time, and have written these experiences into culture and
history. For example, the youthful behaviours, identities and, perhaps
most significantly, the texts produced by contemporary digital practices
can be situated in relation to a long textual history. This book makes vis-
ible a portion of the archive of young peoples’ life writing practices in
order to both provide context for current digital practices and examine
more closely the contributions young people have made to the field of life
writing both as practitioners and innovators.
We also consider how life narrative practices can be a means for young
writers and artists to increase their participation within their respective
cultures. We will demonstrate that the production of life writing for a
public is a means for asserting agency for many young people, in many
contexts. This means recognising that while young people may have
the means to produce cultural texts, it does not mean that they all feel
empowered to do so, or that these texts are responded to ethically by
those who receive them. Rather than thinking of self-representation as a
ubiquitous activity in contemporary youth culture, we situate it as a prac-
tice with a long and diverse history in which young writers have deployed
 1 Introduction 7

life writing to communicate their experience, take charge of their own

self-image and show themselves to be “active participants in society”
(James 2011, p. 34). Life writing is a key strategy young people have used
to intervene in and reorganise how youth are perceived, and to create new
spaces for other young people to respond and represent the self.
Further, life writing often provides a way for young people to negotiate
and assert their citizenship. As Tom Cockburn (2012) notes “Children’s
contributions to society continue to be belittled and devalued, and not
accorded the respect and recognition of being involved in mutual esteem
and solidarity” (p. 201). Young people are active participants in and con-
tributors across different levels of society, culture and politics (James and
James 2004; Liebel 2012); and Cockburn argues for a “reinvigoration of
participatory forms of democracy” so that children’s voices “can be heard
more clearly and recognised” (2012, p. 201). As we discuss further below,
cultural participation plays a pivotal role in citizenship and youth life
writing. Life writing has been a way for young people to contribute to
discussion in the public sphere, and to put issues on to the wider public
agenda.
Youth is a widely thought of as “a time of experimentation with differ-
ent styles of communicating and articulating identity” (Stern 2007, p. 2).
However, traditionally, stories about young people’s lives, like young peo-
ple’s literature and culture, have been “written by adults, illustrated by
adults, edited by adults, marketed by adults, purchased by adults, and
often read by adults” (Jenkins 1998, p. 23). And within culture, more
broadly, as Henry A. Giroux (2000) contends, experiences of youth are
rarely narrated by the young. He writes:

Prohibited from speaking as moral and political agents, youth becomes an

empty category inhabited by the desires, fantasies and interests of the adult
world. This is not to suggest that youth don’t speak; they are simply
restricted from speaking in those spheres where public conversation shapes
social policy and refused the power to make knowledge consequential.
(p. 24)

Through authoring, sharing and responding to life writing young people

have found ways to make their knowledge and experience consequential.
8 Life Narratives and Youth Culture

Life narrative has, and continues to be, a powerful and effective means for
young people to engage with and respond to the discourses that construct
them. These authors have sought and constructed diverse audiences for
their life narratives, from peer groups, intimate publics, the historical
record and public literary culture. However, the utilisation of life narra-
tive as a means of making knowledge and experience consequential brings
certain tradeoffs, and this book explores how young people seeking to
have their stories heard through professional publishing, subcultural and
online environments must adhere to generic expectations and discursive
structures that make their identities and experiences intelligible to their
chosen audience. The case studies examined in this book elaborate the
wide diversity of texts young people produce, and the complex negotia-
tions and possibilities for producing alternative and conforming stories of
young lives. Young people’s life narrative has played a role in establishing
“youth” as a distinctive speaking position. In using life narrative for this
purpose, young people are not alone, as a large variety of individuals and
groups have deployed life narrative as a means of making visible their
experiences and histories: indigenous communities and oppressed racial
and ethnic minorities, women, refugees, Holocaust survivors, gays and
lesbians, survivors of rape and child abuse. In recent decades, as scholars
such as Leigh Gilmore (2001b), Julie Rak (2013) and Sidonie Smith and
Julia Watson (1996, 2001, 2010) have observed, life narrative has moved
from being a cultural form associated with the lives of “great men” to
being a dynamic and influential means for people and communities to
write themselves into culture and history.
Our study is significant because it is the first project to bring the
disciplines of life writing and childhood and youth studies together. It
addresses two gaps in scholarly practice: the largely neglected status of
youth-generated writing in the study of life writing, and the broader lack
of close textual analysis of the texts produced by young people in the
sociology/cultural studies of youth. How can a historical understand-
ing of youth and life narrative contribute to our understanding of the
current practices of life narrative in youth cultures and in online envi-
ronments? In bringing an historically informed focus to the textual prac-
tices in contemporary youth cultures, our aim is to make a significant
contribution to the knowledge base in a number of fields (particularly
 1 Introduction 9

life narrative studies, literary studies, cultural studies, history and youth
studies), and make available important historical knowledge of youth
self-representations that predates and is contemporaneous with the
Internet and electronic mass media culture. We use life narrative meth-
ods to draw attention to the practices of authorship and textuality behind
texts that have more commonly been analysed and explained through
youth cultural practices or identity markers. We have chosen a selection
of case studies to present and complicate the notions of private and pub-
lic self-representation. We aim to show a snapshot of the contemporary
practices, cultures, genres and spaces available for youth self-representa-
tion, and then, look more widely to consider these acts of self-representa-
tion as a means of asserting cultural agency.

“Youth” and Young People: A Note

on Terminology
We use the term “youth” in recognition of its unique status as a cultur-
ally and socially constructed category which is relational to the changing
definitions of childhood and adulthood. The terms “youth” and “young”
evoke a range of images, stereotypes and definitions. These terms have, at
once, positive and negatives connotations, as Gill Jones (2009) outlines,
“youthfulness”

conveys qualities such as strength, beauty, idealism and energy, which are
seen as desirable and coveted by older groups, but on the other hand is also
associated with ‘inferior’ characteristics of inexperience, lack of wisdom,
hot-headedness, experimentation, naivety, greenness, and lack of maturity
and sense. (p. 2)

For example, as Johanna Wyn and Rob White (1997) note, “youth” was
commonly masculinised (and often racialised) in the UK and USA in the
1950s to refer to research on young men from working-class backgrounds
(p. 18). However, in the 2000s, “youth” has emerged—through cultural
texts and scholarship—as a much more complex, and plural categorisa-
tion. It is now more commonly used to signify an important stage in
10 Life Narratives and Youth Culture

identity formation and transition (Weber and Mitchell 2008). Although

the word youth is often used interchangeably with “adolescence,” in
more recent times, youth has been used to encompass a much wider age
period—adolescence through to early-to-mid-twenties—responding to
social trends such as young people living at home longer, delaying mar-
riage and full-time employment (see Best 2007; Giroux 2009; Gill Jones
2009; Helgren and Vasconcellos 2012; Savage 2007). As Wyn and White
(1997) observe, in the twenty-first century, youth has become less about
a biological age and more a process by which young people “engage with
institutions such as schools, the family, the police, welfare and many oth-
ers” (p. 3). So, now most theorists of youth define it as “associated with
the period between leaving school and becoming adult in socioeconomic
terms and thus currently covers the period, in most countries, between
around 15 years and the mid-20s, though both these age ‘boundaries’
are constantly rising” (Gill Jones 2009, p. 11). For example, in creative
industries, most writers under the age of 30 are referred to as “young
writers” and many literary awards for young writers extend their age
boundaries even further.
So, youth is a shifting paradigm defined most often “from above,” and
one of the key ways in which youth is defined is through a consideration
of the cultural practices and texts that young people participate in and/or
create. Cockburn (2012) and others (such as Qvortrup et al. 1994; Liebel
2012) have noted the importance of citizenship in how childhood and
youth are defined; “children are in some respects ‘not citizens’: they have
not ‘come of age’ and consequently do not have the same obligations (such
as financial responsibility) that adults hold” (Cockburn 2012, p. 1). The
social criteria attached to children’s citizenship are ever shifting—what
is expected and what rights are bestowed. For examples, the 1960s and
1970s are thought of as a period of “children’s liberation”—where com-
munity support increased for children’s rights (and associated responsi-
bilities) (Archard 2004, p. 70). Participation within cultural activities and
institutions is an important way to meaningfully exercise citizenship. This
book considers the wide variety of ways producing and circulating life
writing has allowed young people to claim citizenship, and make specific
claims as citizens through the deployment of the genres of life narrative.
The cases studies in this book demonstrate a long tradition of life writing
 1 Introduction 11

being used to establish young people’s right to contribute to the cultural

and political conversation on issues such as feminism, the impact of war,
and the personal and social cost of drug abuse, alcoholism and suicide.
The close study of such uses of life narrative offers an important and hith-
erto under appreciated perspective from which to examine how young
people negotiate and intervene in the political and cultural fields of their
society. The use of life writing by young people has both relied upon the
larger history of life narrative practice and made important innovations
in its applications. In what follows we outline how this study requires an
interdisciplinary approach that brings together youth studies, including
the sociology of youth, and the field of life writing studies.

Life Narrative as a Literary Form and Cultural

Practice
Life writing, an umbrella term for non-fictional literary texts, has a long
history dating back to the Greeks and Romans, and beyond Western cul-
ture. A multitude of forms from oral traditions through to the “apo-
logia,” the “confession,” the “life” and more well-known forms such as
“biography” and “diary” have each shaped contemporary forms of life
writing. Life writing has become one of the most popular and culturally
significant literary forms of recent years. There has been a great deal of
scholarly attention given to life writing as a literary subgenre, much of
which has focused on the shift from the “great man” mode of auto/bio-
graphical practice to life writing from the margins: most notably stories
which attend to social justice issues, to trauma, and the representation
of minority groups. Recent scholarship has also focused on the differ-
ent forms of life writing, particularly the technologies that people use
to tell stories about their lives and to circulate these stories in the pub-
lic domain. In such instances, life “writing” becomes life “narrative” as
visual cultures intersect with the written word (Poletti 2005, 2008, 2011;
McNeill 2012; Morrison 2014; Rak 2005, 2013, 2015).
The term “life narrative” encapsulates a wide and continually expand-
ing field of textual practices used for the non-fictional representation of
the self and lived experience. From longstanding forms such as the diary,
12 Life Narratives and Youth Culture

the letter and the long-form autobiography to more contemporary prac-

tices such as the selfie, blogs and social networking profiles, life writing—
the act of representing one’s own life or the life of someone else—involves
an engagement with the past and a reflection on identity in the present
(Smith and Watson 2010, p. 1). Its non-fictional status is central to life
narrative’s power to command audiences and to make visible experiences
and lives. At its heart, what distinguishes life narrative from fictional
media forms is its claim to have some relationship to the truth of lived
experience. Truth claims are what mark out the genres of life narrative,
and each has their own tropes for establishing a relationship with the
objectively identifiable person of the author (the “historical I”) and the
contents of the text. This promise of truth is guided by generic conven-
tions, such as the author’s name on the front of the book being the same
as the name of the narrator and protagonist of a published autobiography
and memoir, a signature and familiar handwriting in the case of a letter, or
an identity that can be verified via Web search (Lejeune 1989). However,
as many critics of autobiography and biography have discussed, while the
promise of truth is at the core of life narrative’s appeal and power, the
delivery of truth is a deeply complex and fraught undertaking. The core
tension in life narrative between truth and telling a story or presenting an
experience in a way that is interesting, evocative and aesthetically engag-
ing is what distinguishes life narrative from journalism (at least in theory)
and places significant pressure on the life writer to plot, organise, edit and
narrate their experience in a way that will reward and maintain audience
attention. The fundamental importance of this delicate balance—and its
power to command attention—is dramatically demonstrated when life
narrative hoaxes are revealed, such as James Frey’s exaggeration of his
criminal history in his Oprah Winfrey endorsed memoir of addiction A
Million Little Pieces, the Gay Girl in Damascus blog that galvanised public
attention during the Arab Spring but turned out to be written by a male
American graduate student, and the complex web of deception created
by Norma Khouri in her memoir of an honour killing Forbidden Love.
While the susceptibility of life narrative to hoaxing is grounds for many
to dismiss all instances of life writing as suspect, it also makes life narra-
tive a mode of cultural production that can be heavily policed—by audi-
ences, journalists, publishers and critics.
 1 Introduction 13

Yet because of its contentious and precarious ability to make truth

claims about lived experience, it remains a uniquely powerful form of
textual production that can yield insight into the specificity and located-
ness of human experience, as evidenced by Salam Pax’s blogging of the
invasion of Iraq in 2003 (Where Is Raed? later published as The Baghdad
Blogger) and Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl.
It is not just the problem of telling the truth about an aspect of one’s
experience or identity in a way that engages audiences that makes life nar-
rative a uniquely challenging task for the life writer. Memory, a primary
resource in constructing a representational text about one’s life, is notori-
ously and sometimes richly fallible. How can a life writer feel confident
that they know the truth? How can they, and the reader, be sure that
what they remember actually happened? Writing and reading life nar-
rative inevitably brings up these difficult questions of epistemology, and
each writer solves this problem differently. This book will demonstrate
how young life writers, like all authors and artists who have attempted to
represent a truth about themselves—to make their knowledge and expe-
rience consequential by communicating it to an audience—have found
inventive ways to convince the reader, and themselves, of the truth of
their story.
In the corpus of texts examined in life narrative studies, the contri-
bution of young authors to the development of key genres and periods
of life writing is invisible. This book aims to demonstrate how focussed
attention on life writing texts by young people furthers understanding
of key questions about the uses of life writing generally, as well as by
young people specifically. In particular, thinking of young people as a
distinct group of practitioners of life writing expands current scholarly
analysis of how individuals engage with and respond to the discourses
that shape their position in the social field. Scholars in childhood and
youth studies have noted the importance of “self-expression” to young
people’s socialisation, autonomy, participation and agency (Baraldi 2008;
Cockburn 2012), however bringing the critical tools developed in life
narrative studies to these texts complicates this view and enhances our
understanding of how young people deploy and innovate existing genre
tropes. Further, childhood and youth studies have much to offer life writ-
ing studies in terms of a critical engagement with “youth” as an influential
14 Life Narratives and Youth Culture

discourse of identity. In the section that follows, we give a brief overview

of the contribution young life writers have made to life writing with the
aim of making a lineage and an archive of youth life writing that the
contemporary case studies we examine in more detail in later chapters
rest upon. These case studies will illuminate the powerful ways in which
young writers have used life narrative genres as a means for participating
within cultures and writing their stories into history, while renegotiat-
ing the norms and discourses that often place them on the periphery of
social and political discussion. In the next section, we demonstrate what
this approach looks like by delimiting three types of life writing in which
young people have been active and innovative participants.

Making Visible Young People’s Contribution

to the Archive of Life Writing: Three Spaces
of Youth Life Writing
Historically, young writers have played a prominent role in life narrative.
The diverse activities of young life writers and artists can be understood
as being constructed and circulated in three distinct spaces, with dif-
ferent audiences and genre tropes: private written forms; public literary
forms; and multimedia texts, which blur the boundaries between private
and public and have been the focus of extensive research in media and
youth studies, and cultural debate about young people and online “risks.”
In what follows, we locate and historicise the online life narrative prac-
tices which have come to define contemporary youth life narrative (blogs,
status updates/micromemoirs and photosharing) within broader youth-
authored creative and cultural practices and traditions to provide much
needed historical context to contemporary debates.

Private Written Forms

When people think of young people’s life writing prior to the internet,
they likely think of the diary. Indeed, the adolescent diary has itself become
a site of mediated self-representation through multimedia projects such
 1 Introduction 15

as Mortified!, where people read from their teenage diaries, usually for
comic effect. As an ostensibly “private” written form taken up by young
people, the diary has a deep and complex history related to the develop-
ment of education, and the formation of gendered identity in a number
of cultures, particularly British, French and American. In these cases, the
diary form was rarely entirely “private” (without audience), but was fos-
tered as a genre of the personal that young women shared—sometimes
strategically, sometimes in response to surveillance requirements—with
members of their community. Recent scholarship on young women’s dia-
ries suggests interesting links to many forms of online self-representation,
where young people respond to the social requirement of a stable identity
by engaging in self-representation and self-evaluation, a practice that also
exposes the individual to the judgement of others.4 As Sonia Livingstone
(2008) recently observed in opening her discussion of young people and
online practices:

Young people have always devoted attention to the presentation of self.

Friendships have always been made, displayed and broken. Strangers—
unknown, weird or frightening—have always hovered on the edge of the
group, and often, adult onlookers have been puzzled by youthful peer prac-
tices. (Livingstone 2008, p. 394)

In what follows, we demonstrate how scholarship on young women’s dia-

ries of the nineteenth century provides interesting evidence to support
and complicate this claim. In the interests of brevity, we will discuss the
case in France, as recent scholarship by leading researchers of French life
writing, Philippe Lejeune and, more recently, Sonia Wilson (2010), have
made available primary texts for consideration and provided important
analysis of the role of life writing in the formation of identity in the case
of the “jeune fille” (young girl) (Lejeune 2009, pp. 129–143; Wilson
2010). Lejeune’s research has shown that in France, the diary’s use as a
tool for the education of girls began in earnest in the nineteenth century.
Girls were often required to keep diaries by their teachers and parents and
4
Following Judith Butler (2005), we might position the diary as a technology devised to assist
young people in developing a repertoire of self-knowledge that adheres to the dominant discourses
of subjectivity (gendered, religious and age-specific) to sure up the performance of identity that is
a condition of access to the social.
16 Life Narratives and Youth Culture

to read aloud from them when asked. Diaries were coaxed by members
of a girl’s social network: her parents may instruct her to keep a diary, but
she may also do so because “it has become the latest fashion” among her
peers (Lejeune 2009, p. 136).5 The publication of diaries as a memorial to
the spiritual perfection of girls who had died young began in the 1860s,
and confirmed for girls themselves that the diary had the potential for
a wider audience. Where diaries of young girls are published after their
death, they function as representative subjects of an ideal religious, youth-
ful femininity (Lejeune 2009, p. 131).
Diary keeping was one of the means through which young women of
certain classes in France became subjects—as reflective self-writing was
a response to the hail of the discourse of education. As Lejeune asserts,
it was, for a period, literally a mandated activity for the development of
an identity. However, keeping a diary and reading from it was also, in
some cases, a means of connecting to peers—who may also be keeping
diaries—and other members of a girl’s social circle. A young woman may
read aloud from her diary to both entertain select friends and family and
conform to surveillance of the formation of her identity (Lejeune 2009,
p. 136; see also Wilson 2010, p. 1). Lejeune observes after his study of
diaries of young women held in the archives of French families: “One
realizes that in the nineteenth century, diarists were censored both ideo-
logically and aesthetically” (Lejeune 2009, p. 131).
Wilson’s recent study of the diary of Marie Bashkirtseff provides a com-
pelling example of the complex social and personal uses of the diary by a
young woman between the ages of 15 and 25 during this period. In what
follows, we examine only one element of Wilson’s important study: her
discussion of the particular importance the diary played in Bashkirtseff’s
process of educating herself in the requirements of youthful feminine self-
display (dress, behaviour and physical poise) required of a young woman
on the periphery of polite society (Wilson 2010, pp. 86–87). This pro-
vides vital historical detail that can be used to understand the long history
of young people’s use of self-life-writing as a means of producing and

5
Extending Kenneth Plummer’s work, Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson (2010) use the term “coax-
ing” to describe the production of life narrative in response to a person, institution or cultural
imperative that requires life story (pp. 50–56).
 1 Introduction 17

sharing an identity that is in keeping with social expectations and the

important and complex role of mediation in that process.6
Marie Bashkirtseff was born in 1858 and wrote in her diary every-
day from age 14 until her death from tuberculosis in 1884, aged 25.
The child of unhappily married parents, Bashkirtseff moved with her
mother and brother from her native Ukraine to Nice, where they lived
on the periphery of polite society. Bashkirtseff longed to be a great artist,
she trained at the Academie Julian and submitted paintings to the salon.
However, in 1884, with her tuberculosis confirmed and frustrated by
the limited reception of her painting, Bashkirtseff began to think that
perhaps it was her diary that could secure her fame. On May 1, 1884, she
wrote a preface for her diary, which begins:

What is the use of lying or pretending? Yes, it is clear that I have the desire,
if not the hope, of staying on this earth by whatever means possible. If I
don’t die young, I hope to become a great artist. If I do, I want my journal
to be published. It cannot fail to be interesting. (Bashkirtseff 1997, p. 1)

In her study of Marie Bashkirtseff’s diary, Wilson furthers our under-

standing of the kind of attention young women paid to the presentation
of self by analysing Bashkirtseff’s recording and reflecting upon fashion
and self-presentation in her diary. Bashkirtseff records in great detail both
her own toilette and the ensembles of other women and girls she sees on
the promenade and at parties. She records her study of the effects of dif-
ferent emotions, and light, on her countenance (Wilson 2010, p. 87). For
example, on Friday February 18, 1876, she writes:

At the Capitol this evening, there was a grand masked ball. Dina, her
mother and I went at 11:00. I didn’t wear a domino, but a black silk dress
with a long trim and a tight-fitting bodice. It has a nice tunic of black gauze
with silver lace trimmings draped in front and bunched up behind so as to
make the most graceful hood imaginable. My black velvet mask is trimmed

6
See, for example, Wilson’s chapter on Bashkirtseff’s preface to her diary (written shortly before her
death from tuberculosis) (2010, pp. 25–45) which analyses Bashkirtseff’s complex engagement
with dominant discourses around autobiography, the diary, and the “jeune fille” as a writing subject
“incapable of knowing herself ” (Wilson 2010, p.39).
18 Life Narratives and Youth Culture

with black lace. I wore light-coloured gloves and a rose with lilies-of-the-
valley in the bodice. Our appearance created a sensation. … I changed
escorts several times. (Bashkirtseff 1997, p. 356)

Wilson argues that Bashkirtseff’s diary can be read “as a narrative of

apprenticeship in the feminine art of self-display,” perhaps also an apt
description of young women’s use of the selfie (Wilson 2010, p. 86). “If
the male autobiographer traditionally represents his passage from child-
hood to manhood in terms of a forging of the self through the affronting
and surmounting of obstacles,” Wilson suggests, “for the young woman
of a certain social standing, successfully entering le monde and maintain-
ing a position within it necessitated the acquisitions of skills in the (re)
presentation of her person” (Wilson 2010, pp. 86–87). Here, Wilson
provides an important precedent for the practices of self-display online,
as she demonstrates how the diary was a tool used by young people to
record and analyse observations of themselves and others, and refine their
practice of the complex art of self-display that was a vital component of
their interpellation to gendered identity.
This education extends, in the case of Bashkirtseff, to the more subtle
and arguably more important lesson that the desire for self-display and
the labour required to undertake it must be disavowed. Responding to the
concerns of the Russian consul in Nice, in 1873, “that Marie with her taste
for fine dress and pretty boots sets a bad example for his own daughters”
(Wilson 2010, p. 90)—a concern which could result in her being ostra-
cised from society in Nice—Marie records how she alters her behaviour
when the consul appears at a party (Wilson 2010, p. 90). In recognising
that she must hide her desire to be admired, Marie learns the valuable
lesson that “managing the display of one’s desire for display is all part of
the art of self-display” (Wilson 2010, p. 90). Bashkirtseff does not cease
to desire opportunities for self-display, as her journal and its preface indi-
cate, but recognises the need to limit expressions of that desire in public.
Indeed, by Friday February 18, 1876, Marie is able to recognise that it is
a slight to say of another woman “You’ve been staring at her, God knows.
She seems to be very well pleased—and poses” (Bashkirtseff 1997, p. 357).
Wilson’s analysis of Bashkirtseff’s journal gives us insight into the ped-
agogical function of life writing, where autobiographical acts are a tool
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with every tide! This became the universal supply for us and for the
Natives all round the Harbour and for miles inland. Hundreds of
Natives from all parts of Tanna flocked to examine this greatest
wonder they had ever seen—rain rising up out of the earth. I built it
round with a kind of stone brought in my boat from the other side of
the bay; and for many years it was the only fresh water supply for the
Natives all around. Some years later a native Chief sank a well about
a mile nearer the entrance to the Harbour at his own village, and
built it round with the bricks that I had purchased for house-
building; these he grabbed and thus appropriated! Many a vessel,
calling at the Harbour, was glad to get her casks refilled at my well,
and all were apparently more friendly because of it; but the Sinking
of this Well produced no such revolution as on Aniwa,—to be
hereafter related.
For fully three months, all our available time, with all the native
help which I could hire, was spent in erecting a building to serve for
Church and School. It was fifty feet long, by twenty-one feet six
inches broad. The studs were three feet apart, and all fixed by tenon
and mortise into upper and lower wall plates. The beautiful roof of
iron, wood, and sugar-cane leaf, was supported by three massive
pillars of wood, sunk deeply into the ground. The roof extended
about three feet over the wall plates, both to form a verandah and to
carry the rain-drop free beyond the walls. It was made of sugar-cane
leaf and cocoa-nut leaves all around. The floor was laid with white
coral, broken small, and covered with cocoa-nut leaf mats, such as
those on which the Natives sat. Indeed, it was as comfortable a
House of Prayer as any man need wish for in the tropics, though
having only open spaces for doors and windows! I bought the heavy
wood for it on Aneityum—price, fifty pairs of native trousers; and
these again were the gift of my Bible Class in Glasgow, all cut and
sewed by their own hands. I gave also one hundred and thirty yards
of cloth, along with other things, for other needful wood.
My Tannese people at first opposed the erection of a Church. They
did not wish Jehovah to secure a House on their island. On the
opening day, only five men, three women, and three children were
present, besides our Aneityumese Teachers. But after the morning
service, on that day, I visited ten villages, and had worship in each.
The people were generally shy and unfriendly. They said that we
were the cause of the prevailing sickness and fever. They had no idea
of any sickness or death being natural, but believed that all such
events were caused by some one nahaking, i.e., bewitching them.
Hence their incessant feuds; and many were murdered in blind
revenge.
As we were preparing a foundation for the Church, a huge and
singular-looking round stone was dug up, at sight of which the
Tannese stood aghast. The eldest Chief said,—
“Missi, that stone was either brought there by Karapanamun (the
Evil Spirit), or hid there by our great Chief who is dead. That is the
Stone God to which our forefathers offered human sacrifices; these
holes held the blood of the victim till drunk up by the Spirit. The
Spirit of that stone eats up men and women and drinks their blood,
as our fathers taught us. We are in greatest fear!”
A Sacred Man claimed possession, and was exceedingly desirous to
carry it off; but I managed to keep it, and did everything in my power
to show them the absurdity of these foolish notions. Idolatry had not,
indeed, yet fallen throughout Tanna, but one cruel idol, at least, had
to give way for the erection of God’s House on that benighted land.
An ever-memorable event was the printing of my first book in
Tannese. Thomas Binnie, Esq., Glasgow, gave me a printing-press
and a font of type. Printing was one of the things I had never tried,
but having now prepared a booklet in Tannese, I got my press into
order, and began fingering the type. But book-printing turned out to
be for me a much more difficult affair than house-building had been.
Yet by dogged perseverance I succeeded at last. My biggest difficulty
was how to arrange the pages properly! After many failures, I folded
a piece of paper into the number of leaves wanted, cut the corners,
folding them back, and numbering as they would be when correctly
placed in the book; then folding all back without cutting up the sheet,
I found now by these numbers how to arrange the pages in the frame
or case for printing, as indicated on each side. And do you think me
foolish, when I confess that I shouted in an ecstasy of joy when the
first sheet came from the press all correct? It was about one o’clock
in the morning. I was the only white man then on the island, and all
the Natives had been fast asleep for hours! Yet I literally pitched my
hat into the air, and danced like a schoolboy round and round that
printing-press; till I began to think, Am I losing my reason? Would it
not be liker a Missionary to be upon my knees, adoring God for this
first portion of His blessed Word ever printed in this new language?
Friend, bear with me, and believe me, that was as true worship as
ever was David’s dancing before the Ark of his God! Nor think that I
did not, over that first sheet of God’s Word ever printed in the
Tannese tongue, go upon my knees too, and then, and every day
since, plead with the mighty Lord to carry the light and joy of His
own Holy Bible into every dark heart and benighted home on Tanna!
But the Tannese had a superstitious dread of books, and especially of
God’s Book. I afterwards heard that Dr. Turner had printed a small
primer in Tannese, translated by the help of the Samoan Teachers;
but this I never saw till near the close of my work on Tanna. Dr.
Geddie sent me a copy, but it was more Samoan than Tannese,
especially in its spelling, and I could make little or nothing of it.
Shortly after this, I was greatly refreshed by the visit of an
American whaler, the Camden Packet, under Captain Allan. He, his
chief officer, and many of his double company of seamen, were
decided Christians—a great contrast to most of the Traders that had
called at Port Resolution. The Captain cordially invited me on board
to preach and conduct a religious service. That evening I enjoyed
exceedingly—wells in the desert! The Captain introduced me, saying,
—
“This is my ship’s company. My first officer and most of my men
are real Christians, trying to love and serve Jesus Christ. We have
been three years out on this voyage, and are very happy with each
other. You would never hear or see worse on board of this vessel than
you see now. And God has given us gratifying success.”
He afterwards told me that he had a very valuable cargo of sperm
oil on board, the vessel being nearly filled up with it. He was eager to
leave supplies, or do something for me, but I needed nothing that he
could give. His mate, on examining my boat, found a hole in her, and
several planks split and bulged in, as I had gone down on a reef with
her when out on Mission work, and narrowly escaped drowning.
Next morning, the Captain, of his own accord, set his carpenter to
repair the boat, and left it as good as new. Not one farthing of
recompense would any of them take from me; their own Christian
love rewarded them, in the circumstances. I had been longing for a
chance to send it to Sydney for repairs, and felt deeply thankful for
such unexpected and generous aid. The Captain would not admit
that the delay was any loss to him,—his boats spending the day in
purchasing cocoa-nuts and provisions from the Natives for his own
ship. Oh, how the Christlike spirit knits together all true followers of
Christ! What other earthly or human tie could have so bound that
stranger to me? In the heart of Christ we met as brothers.
Dangers again darkened round me. One day, while toiling away at
my house, the war Chief, his brother, and a large party of armed men
surrounded the plot where I was working. They all had muskets,
besides their own native weapons. They watched me for some time in
silence, and then every man levelled a musket straight at my head.
Escape was impossible. Speech would only have increased my
danger. My eyesight came and went for a few moments. I prayed to
my Lord Jesus, either Himself to protect me, or to take me home to
His Glory. I tried to keep working on at my task, as if no one was
near me. In that moment, as never before, the words came to me,
—“Whatsoever ye shall ask in My name, I will do it;” and I knew that
I was safe. Retiring a little from their first position, no word having
been spoken, they took up the same attitude somewhat farther off,
and seemed to be urging one another to fire the first shot. But my
dear Lord restrained them once again, and they withdrew, leaving
me with a new cause for trusting Him with all that concerned me for
Time and Eternity. Perils seemed, however, to enclose me on every
hand, and my life was frequently attempted. I had to move about
more cautiously than ever, some days scarcely daring to appear
outside my Mission premises. For I have ever most firmly believed,
and do believe, that only when we use every lawful and possible
means for the preservation of our life, which is God’s second greatest
gift to man (His Son being the first), can we expect God to protect us,
or have we the right to plead His precious promises.
The vessel of one calling himself Prince de Jean Beuve, a French
refugee, who had become a naturalized American, visited Port
Resolution. He said, he had to escape from his own country for
political offences. His large and beautiful ship was fitted up and
armed like a Man-of-war. She was manned chiefly by slaves, whom
he ruled with an iron hand. What a contrast to Captain Allan’s
whaler! Yet he also was very sympathetic and kind to me. Having
heard rumour of my trials and dangers, he came on shore, as soon as
his ship cast anchor, with a body of armed men. He was effusively
polite, with all a Frenchman’s gush and gesticulation, and offered to
do anything possible for me. He would take me to Aneityum or
Sydney or wherever I wished. The ship was his own; he was sailing
chiefly for pleasure, and he had called at our Islands to see if
sufficient trade could be opened up to justify his laying on a line of
steamers to call here in their transit. He urged me, I believe
sincerely, to give him the pleasure of taking me and my belongings to
some place of safety. But I was restrained from leaving, through the
fear that I would never be permitted to return, and that Christ’s work
would suffer. In the still burning hope of being able to lead the
Tannese to love and serve Jesus, I declined with much gratitude his
genuine kindness. He looked truly sorry to leave me in the
circumstances wherein I was placed. After two hours on shore, he
returned to his ship towards evening.
Knowing that the Tannese were threatening to burn my former
house, which I wished to remove to higher ground and add to the
room I now occupied on the hill, I took advantage of the presence of
the Prince’s vessel, and set my Aneityumese Teachers and some
friendly Natives to prepare for the task; but unfortunately, I forgot to
send word to the Frenchman regarding my plans and aims. We
removed the sugar-cane leaf thatch from the roof of the house, and
began burning it on cleared ground, so that I might be able to save
the heavy wood which could not be replaced on Tanna. Our French
friend, on seeing the flames rising up furiously, at once loaded his
heavy guns, and prepared his men for action. Under great
excitement, he came ashore with a large number of armed men,
leaving the rest on board ready at a given signal to protect them with
shot and shell. Leaving one half of those brought on shore to guard
the boats, he came running towards my house, followed by the other
half, wet with perspiration, and crying,—
“Fer are dey? fer are dey? De scoundrels! I vill do for dem, and
protect you. I sall punish dem, de scoundrels!”
He was so excited, he could scarcely compose himself to hear my
explanations, which, when understood, he laughed at heartily. He
again urged me to leave in his vessel; he could not bear me to lead
such a life amongst savages. I explained to him my reasons for not
leaving the island, but these he seemed unable to understand. He put
his men through drill on shore, and left them under officers, ready
for action at a moment’s warning, saying they would all be the better
for a day on shore. He wished to take pot luck with me at our Mission
House of one room for all purposes! My humble dinner and tea must
have been anything but a treat for him, but he seemed to relish the
deliverance for once from all the conventionalisms of the world.
Before he left, he sent of his own accord for all the Chiefs within
reach, and warned them that if they hurt me or took my life, he
would return with his Man-of-war and punish them, by killing
themselves and firing their villages; and that a British Man-of-war
would also come and set their island on fire. They promised all
possible good conduct, being undoubtedly put into great terror. The
kind-hearted Frenchman left, with profuse expressions of admiration
for my courage and of pity for my lot. No doubt he thought me a
foolish dreamer of dreams.
A miserable contrast befell us in the bad impression produced by
the conduct of one of Captain T——’s vessels in the Sydney sandal-
wood trade. Whale-boats had been sent out with Mr. Copeland and
myself from Glasgow, as part of the necessary equipment of every
Missionary on these Islands. Mine being rather large and heavy, I
had sold it to one of T——’s captains; but the other had also been left
to my care. After having used my boat for about twelve months—the
best boat in that trade only being expected to last two years—the
Captain called on Mr. Copeland, and got a note from him to me
regarding the sale of his boat too. He declared, when calling on me,
that Mr. Copeland had authorized him to get his boat from me in
exchange for mine, which he had now been using for a year. I asked
for the letter, and found it to be authority for me to sell his boat for
cash only and at the same price as mine. Captain V—— then raged at
me and stormed, declaring that he would return my old boat, and
take the other in defiance of me. Swearing dreadfully, he made for
his ship, and returned with a large party of men whom he had picked
up amongst the Islands. Collecting also a company of Tannese, and
offering them tobacco, he broke down the fence, burst into the boat-
house, and began to draw out the boat. Here I reached the spot, and
sternly opposed them. He swore and foamed at me, and before the
natives knocked and pulled me about, even kicking at me, though I
evaded his blows. Standing by, I said in Tannese,—
 “You are helping that man to steal my boat; he is stealing it as you
see.”
On hearing this, the Tannese ran away, and his own party alone
could not do it. In great wrath, he went off again to his vessel, and
brought on shore as much tobacco as could be held in a large
handkerchief tied by the four corners; but even for that, our own
Natives refused to help him. He offered it then to a crowd of Inland
savages, gathered at the head of the bay, who, regardless of my
remonstrances, launched the boat, he raging at and all but striking
me. Instead of returning, however, the other boat to the house, he
merely set it adrift from his vessel, and it was carried on to the reef,
where it remained fast, and was knocked about by the waves. After
his vessel left, I, with much difficulty, got it off and brought it to the
boat-house. Imagine, when such was their tyrannical treatment of a
Missionary and a British fellow-subject, how they would act towards
these poor native Islanders.
By the earliest opportunity, I wrote all the facts of the case to his
employer, Captain T—— of Sydney, but got not even a reply, while
Captain V—— continued in their trade, a scourge to these Islands,
and a dishonour to his country and to humanity. Unfriendly Tannese
now said,—
“When a white man from his own country can so pull and knock
the Missionary about and steal his boat and chain without being
punished for it, we also may do as we please!”
I hesitate not to record my conviction that that man’s conduct had
a very bad effect, emboldening them in acts of dishonesty and in
attempts upon my life till the Mission Station was ultimately broken
up. After I had to escape from Tanna, with bare life in my hand, one
of the same Captain’s vessels called at Port Resolution and gave the
Natives about three pounds weight of useless tobacco, purchasable at
Sydney for less than one shilling per pound, to allow them to take
away my boat, with oars, sails, mast, and all other belongings. They
also purchased all the plunder from my house. Both boats were so
large and so strongly built, that by adding a plank or two they turned
them into small-decked schooners, admirably suited for the sandal-
wood traffic round the shores, while larger vessels lay at safe
anchorage to receive what they collected. Once, when Dr. Inglis and I
met in Sydney, we called on Captain T—— and stated the whole case,
asking reasonable payment at least for the boats. He admitted that
the boats had been taken and were in his service, and agreed to pay
us for the boats if we would repay the large sum invested therein by
his Captains. Calling one of his clerks, he instructed him to trace in
the office record how much had been paid to the Tannese for the
Missionary’s boat.
The young man innocently returned the reply, “Three pounds of
tobacco.”
In anger, he said, “I understood that a larger value had been
given!”
The clerk assured him, “That is the only record.”
Captain T——, after discussing the worth of the boat as being about
£80, agreed to give us £60, but in writing out the cheque, threw
down the pen and shouted, “I’ll see you —— first!”
Offering £50, to which we agreed, he again resiled, and declared
he would not give a penny above £30.
We appealed to him to regard this as a debt of honour, and to
cease haggling over the price, as he well knew how we had been
wronged in the matter.
Finally we left him declaring, “I am building similar boats just now
at £25 apiece; I will send you one of them, and you may either take
that or want!”
We left, glad to get away on any terms from such a character; and,
though next year he did send one of his promised boats for me to
Aneityum, yet the conduct of his degraded servants engaged in the
sandal-wood trade had a great share in the guilt of breaking up and
ruining our Mission. Thousands upon thousands were made by it
yearly, so long as it lasted; but it was a trade steeped in human blood
and indescribable vice, nor could God’s blessing rest on them and
their ill-gotten gains. Oh, how often did we pray at that time to be
delivered from the hands of unreasonable and wicked men! Sandal-
wood traders murdered many of the Islanders when robbing them of
their wood, and the Islanders murdered many of them and their
servants in revenge. White men, engaged in the trade, also shot dead
and murdered each other in vicious and drunken quarrels, and not a
few put end to their own lives. I have scarcely known one of them
who did not come to ruin and poverty; the money that came even to
the shipowners was a conspicuous curse. Fools there made a mock at
sin, thinking that no one cared for these poor savages, but their sin
did find them out, and God made good in their experience His own
irrepealable law, “The wages of sin is death.”
Ships, highly insured, were said to be sent into our Island trade to
be deliberately wrecked. One Sabbath evening, towards dark, the
notorious Captain H——, in command of a large ship, allowed her to
drift ashore and be wrecked without any apparent effort to save her.
Next morning, the whole company were wading about in the water
and pretending to have lost everything! The Captain, put in prison
when he returned to Sydney for running away with another man’s
wife and property, imposed on Mr. Copeland and myself, getting all
the biscuits, flour, and blankets we could spare for his destitute and
shipwrecked company. We discovered afterwards that she was lying
on a beautiful bank of sand, only a few yards from the shore, and that
everything contained in her could be easily rescued without danger
to life or limb! What we parted with was almost necessary for our life
and health; of course he gave us an order on Captain T—— for
everything, but not one farthing was ever repaid. At first he made a
pretence of paying the Natives for food received; but afterwards, an
armed band went inland night by night and robbed and plundered
whatever came to hand. The Natives, seeing the food of their children
ruthlessly stolen, were shot down without mercy when they dared to
interfere; and the life of every white man was marked for speedy
revenge. Glad were we when a vessel called, and carried away these
white heathen Savages.
The same Captain T—— also began the shocking Kanaka labour-
traffic to the Colonies, after the sandal-wood trade was exhausted,
which has since destroyed so many thousands of the Natives in what
was nothing less than Colonial slavery, and has largely depopulated
the Islands either directly or indirectly. And yet he wrote, and
published in Sydney, a pamphlet declaring that he and his sandal-
wooders and Kanaka labour collectors had done more to civilize the
Islanders than all our Mission efforts combined. Civilize them,
indeed! By spreading disease and vice, misery and death amongst
them, even at the best; at the worst, slaving many of them till they
perished at their toils, shooting down others under one or other
guilty pretence, and positively sweeping thousands into an untimely
grave. A common cry on their lips was,—
“Let them perish and let the white men occupy these Isles.”
It was such conduct as this, that made the Islanders suspect all
foreigners and hate the white man and seek revenge in robbery and
murder. One Trader, for instance, a sandal-wooder and collector of
Kanakas, living at Port Resolution, abominably ill-used a party of
Natives. They determined in revenge to plunder his store. The cellar
was underneath his house, and he himself slept above the trap-door
by which alone it could be entered. Night and day he was guarded by
armed men, Natives of adjoining islands, and all approaches to his
premises were watched by savage dogs that gave timely warning. He
felt himself secure. But the Tannese actually constructed a tunnel
underground from the bush, through which they rolled away
tobacco, ammunition, etc., and nearly emptied his cellar! My heart
bled to see men so capable and clever thus brutally abused and
demoralized and swept away. By the Gospel, and the civilization
which it brings, they were capable of learning anything and being
trained to a useful and even noble manhood. But all influence that
ever I witnessed from these Traders was degrading, and dead against
the work of our Missions.
The Chief, Nowar Noukamara, usually known as Nowar, was my
best and most-to-be-trusted friend He was one of the nine or ten who
were most favourable to the Mission work, attending the Worship
pretty regularly, conducting it also in their own houses and villages,
and making generally a somewhat unstable profession of
Christianity. One or more of them often accompanied me on
Sabbath, when going to conduct the Worship at inland villages, and
sometimes they protected me from personal injury. This Nowar
influenced the Harbour Chiefs and their people for eight or ten miles
around to get up a great feast in favour of the Worship of Jehovah.
All were personally and specially invited, and it was the largest
Assembly of any kind that I ever witnessed on the Islands.
When all was ready, Nowar sent a party of Chiefs to escort me and
my Aneityumese Teachers to the feast. Fourteen Chiefs, in turn,
made speeches to the assembled multitude; the drift of all being, that
war and fighting be given up on Tanna,—that no more people be
killed by nahak, for witchcraft and sorcery were lies,—that Sacred
Men no longer profess to make wind and rain, famine and plenty,
disease and death,—that the dark heathen talk of Tanna should
cease, that all here present should adopt the Worship of Jehovah as
taught to them by the Missionary and the Aneityumese,—and that all
the banished Tribes should be invited to their own lands to live in
peace! These strange speeches did not draw forth a single opposing
voice. Doubtless these men were in earnest, and had there been one
master mind to rule and mould them, their regeneration had
dawned. Though for the moment a feeling of friendliness prevailed,
the Tannese were unstable as water and easily swayed one way or the
other. They are born talkers, and can and will speechify on all
occasions, but most of it means nothing, bears no fruit.
After these speeches, a scene followed which gradually assumed
shape as an idolatrous ceremonial and greatly horrified me. It was in
connection with the immense quantity of food that had been
prepared for the feast, especially pigs and fowls. A great heap had
been piled up for each Tribe represented, and a handsome portion
also set apart for the Missionary and his Teachers. The ceremony was
this, as nearly as I could follow it. One hundred or so of the leading
men marched into the large cleared space in the centre of the
assembled multitudes, and stood there facing each other in equal
lines, with a man at either end closing up the passage between. At the
middle they stood eight or ten feet apart, gradually nearing till they
almost met at either end. Amid tremendous silence for a few
moments all stood hushed; then every man kneeled on his right
knee, extended his right hand, and bent forward till his face nearly
touched the ground. Thereon the man at the one end began
muttering something, his voice rising ever louder as he rose to his
feet, when it ended in a fearful yell as he stood erect. Next the two
long lines of men, all in a body, went through the same ceremonial,
rising gradually to their feet, with mutterings deepening into a howl,
and heightening into a yell as they stood erect. Finally, the man at
the other end went through the same hideous forms. All this was
thrice deliberately repeated, each time with growing frenzy. And
then, all standing on their feet, they united as with one voice in what
sounded like music running mad up and down the scale, closing with
a long, deep-toned, hollow howl as of souls in pain. With smiles of
joy, the men then all shook hands with each other. Nowar and
another Chief briefly spoke, and the food was then divided and
exchanged, a principal man of each Tribe standing by to receive and
watch his portion.
At this stage, Nowar and Nerwangi, as leaders, addressed the
Teachers and the Missionary to this effect:—
“This feast is held to move all the Chiefs and People here to give up
fighting, to become friends, and to worship your Jehovah God. We
wish you to remain, and to teach us all good conduct. As an evidence
of our sincerity, and of our love, we have prepared this pile of food
for you.”
In reply, I addressed the whole multitude, saying how pleased I
was with their speeches and with the resolutions and promises which
they all had made. I further urged them to stick fast by these, and
that grand fruits would arise to their island, to themselves and to
their children.
Having finished a brief address, I then walked forward to the very
middle of the circle, and laid down before them a bundle of stripes of
red calico and pieces of white calico, a number of fish-hooks, knives,
etc. etc., requesting the two Chiefs to divide my offering of goodwill
among the Tribes assembled, and also the pile of food presented to
us, as a token of my love and friendship to them all.
Their insisting upon me taking their present of food, laid upon me
an unpleasant and dangerous necessity of explaining my refusal. I
again thanked them very warmly, and explained that, as they had in
my presence given away all their food to an Idol God and asked his
blessing on it as a sacrifice, even to Karapanamun, the great Evil
Spirit, my people and I durst not and could not eat of it, for that
would be to have fellowship with their Idols and to dishonour
Jehovah God. Christians could acknowledge only the one true and
living God, and ask His blessing on their food, and offer it and
themselves in thanksgiving unto Him, but unto no cruel or evil
Spirit. Yet I explained to them how much I thanked them, and how I
loved them just as much as if we had eaten all their gifts, and how it
would please us to see them all, along with my own gifts, divided
amongst their Tribes.
Not without some doubt, and under considerable trial, did I take
this apparently unfriendly attitude. But I feared to seem even to
approve of any act of devil-worship, or to confirm them in it, being
there to discourage all such scenes, and to lead them to acknowledge
only the true God. I felt as if guilty and as if the hat were rising from
my head, when I heard them imprecating and appeasing their God,
without being able to show them the God of Love and the better way
into His presence through Jesus Christ. My opportunity to do so
arose over the refusal of the food offered unto Idols, and I told them
of the claims of Jehovah, the jealous God, who would not share His
worship with any other. But all the time I felt this qualm,—that it
were better to eat food with men who acknowledged some God and
asked his blessing than with those white Heathens at home, who
asked the blessing of no God, nor thanked Him, in this worse than
the dog which licks the hand that feeds it! Nowar and Nerwangi
explained in great orations what I meant, and how I wished all to be
divided amongst the assembled Tribes to show my love. With this, all
seemed highly satisfied.
Heathen dances were now entered upon, their paint and feathers
and ornaments adding to the wildness of the scene. The men seemed
to dance in an inside ring, and the women in an outside ring, at a
considerable distance from each other. Music was supplied by
singing and clapping of hands. The order was perfect, and the figures
highly intricate. But I have never been able to associate dancing with
things lovely and of good report! After the dancing, all retired to the
bush, and a kind of sham fight followed on the public cleared ground.
A host of painted savages rushed in and took possession with songs
and shoutings. From the bush, on the opposite side, the chanting of
women was heard in the distance, louder and louder as they
approached. Snatching from a burning fire flaming sticks, they
rushed on the men with these, beating them and throwing burning
pieces of wood among them, till with deafening yells amongst
themselves and amidst shouts of laughter from the crowd, they drove
them from the space, and danced thereon and sang a song of victory.
The dancing and fighting, the naked painted figures, and the
constant yells and shoutings gave one a weird sensation, and
suggested strange ideas of Hell broken loose.
The final scene approached, when the men assisted their women to
fill all the allotted food into baskets, to be carried home and eaten
there; for the different Tribes do not sit down together and eat
together as we would do; their coming together is for the purpose of
exchanging and dividing the food presented. And now they broke
into friendly confusion, and freely walked about mingling with each
other; and a kind of savage rehearsal of Jonathan and David took
place. They stripped themselves of their fantastic dresses, their
handsomely woven and twisted grass skirts, leaf skirts, grass and leaf
aprons; they gave away or exchanged all these, and their ornaments
and bows and arrows, besides their less romantic calico and print
dresses more recently acquired. The effusion and ceremonial of the
gifts and exchanges seemed to betoken a loving people; and so they
were for the feast—but that laid not aside a single deadly feud, and
streams of blood and cries of hate would soon efface all traces of this
day.
I had now six Stations, opened up and ministered to by
Aneityumese Teachers, at the leading villages along the coast, and
forming links in a chain towards the other Mission Establishment on
Tanna. And there were villages prepared to receive as many more.
These Teachers had all been cannibals once, yet, with one exception,
they proved themselves to the best of my judgment to be a band of
faithful and devoted followers of Christ. Their names were Abraham,
Kowari, Nomuri, Nerwa, Lazarus, and Eoufati. I visited them
periodically and frequently, encouraging and guiding them, as well
as trying to interest the villagers in their teaching and work. But,
whenever war broke out they had all to return to the Mission House,
and sleep there for safety by night, visiting their Stations, if
practicable, by the light of day. My poor dear Teachers, too, had to
bear persecutions for Jesu’s sake, as the following incident will
sorrowfully prove.
A native woman, with some murderous purpose in her heart,
pretended great friendship to the excellent wife of one of my fellow-
labourers. She was specially effusive in bringing to her dishes of food
from time to time. Having thus gained confidence, she caught a little
black fish of those parts, known to be deadly poisonous, and baked it
up in a mess for the unsuspecting Teacher’s wife. On returning, she
boasted of what she had done, and thereon a friendly neighbour
rushed off to warn the other, but arrived just to learn that the fatal
meal had been taken. Beyond all reach of human skill, this unknown
martyr for Christ died soon after in great agony, and doubtless
received her Master’s reward.
 In helping to open up new Stations, those dear native Teachers
often bore the greatest hardships and indignities with a noble self-
denial and positively wonderful patience. Nothing known to men
under Heaven could have produced their new character and
disposition, except only the grace of God in Christ Jesus. Though still
marred by many of the faults of Heathenism, they were at the roots
of their being literally new creatures, trying, according to their best
light, to live for and to please their new Master, Jesus Christ. This
shone out very conspicuously in these two apostolic souls, Abraham
and Kowari, as leaders among all the devoted band.
Let me recall another occasion, on which I prevented a war. Early
one morning, the savage yells of warring Tribes woke me from sleep.
They had broken into a quarrel about a woman, and were fiercely
engaged with their clubs. According to my custom, I rushed in
amongst them, and, not without much difficulty, was blessed in
separating them before deadly wounds had been given or received.
On this occasion, the Chiefs of both Tribes, being very friendly to me,
drove their people back from each other at my earnest appeals.
Sitting down at length within earshot, they had it out in a wild
scolding match, a contest of lung and tongue. Meanwhile I rested on
a canoe midway betwixt them, in the hope of averting a renewal of
hostilities. By-and-by an old Sacred Man, a Chief called Sapa, with
some touch of savage comedy in his breast, volunteered an episode
which restored good humour to the scene. Leaping up, he came
dancing and singing towards me, and there, to the amusement of all,
re-enacted the quarrel, and mimicked rather cleverly my attempt at
separating the combatants. Smashing at the canoe with his club, he
yelled and knocked down imaginary enemies; then, rushing first at
one party and then at the other, he represented me as appealing and
gesticulating and pushing them afar from each other, till he became
quite exhausted. Thereon he came and planted himself in great glee
beside me, and looked around as if to say,—“You must laugh, for I
have played.” At this very juncture, a loud cry of “Sail O!” broke upon
our ears, and all parties leapt to their feet, and prepared for a new
sensation; for in those climes, everything—war itself—is a smaller
interest than a vessel from the Great Unknown World sailing into
your Harbour.
 Not many days thereafter, a very horrible transaction occurred.
Before daybreak, I heard shot after shot quickly discharged in the
Harbour. One of my Teachers came running, and cried,—
“Missi, six or seven men have been shot dead this morning for a
great feast. It is to reconcile Tribes that have been at war, and to
allow a banished Tribe to return in peace.”
I learned that the leading men had in council agreed upon this
sacrifice, but the name of each victim was kept a secret till the last
moment. The torture of suspense and uncertainty seemed to be
borne by all as part of their appointed lot, nor did they prepare as if
suspecting any dread assault. Before daylight, the Sacred Men
allocated a murderer to the door of each house where a victim slept.
A signal shot was fired; all rushed to their doors, and the doomed
ones were shot and clubbed to death as they attempted to escape.
Their bodies were then borne to a sacred tree, and hung up there by
the hands for a time, as an offering to the Gods. Being taken down,
they were carried ceremoniously and laid out on the shore near my
house, placed under a special guard.
Information had reached me that my Teachers and I were also
destined victims for this same feast, and sure enough we espied a
band of armed men, the killers, despatched towards our premises.
Instantaneously I had the Teachers and their wives and myself
securely locked into the Mission House; and, cut off from all human
hope, we set ourselves to pray to our dear Lord Jesus, either Himself
to protect us or to take us to His glory. All through that morning and
forenoon we heard them tramp-tramping round our house,
whispering to each other, and hovering near window and door. They
knew that there were a double-barrelled fowling-piece and a revolver
on the premises, though they never had seen me use them, and that
may, under God, have held them back in dread. But such a thought
did not enter our souls even in that awful time. I had gone to save,
and not to destroy. It would be easier for me at any time to die than
to kill one of them. Our safety lay in our appeal to that blessed Lord
who had placed us there, and to whom all power had been given in
Heaven and on Earth. He that was with us was more than all that
could be against us. This is strength; this is peace:—to feel, in
entering on every day, that all its duties and trials have been
committed to the Lord Jesus,—that, come what may, He will use us
for His own glory and our real good!
All through that dreadful morning, and far into the afternoon, we
thus abode together, feeling conscious that we were united to this
dear Lord Jesus, and we had sweet communion with Him,
meditating on the wonders of His person and the hopes and glories
of His kingdom. Oh, that all my readers may learn something of this
in their own experience of the Lord! I can wish them nothing more
precious. Towards sundown, constrained by the Invisible One, they
withdrew from our Mission House, and left us once more in peace.
They bore away the slain to be cooked, and distributed amongst the
Tribes, and eaten in their feast of reconciliation; a covenant sealed in
blood, and soon, alas, to be buried in blood again! For many days
thereafter, we had to take unusual care, and not unduly expose
ourselves to danger; for dark characters were seen prowling about in
the bush near at hand, and we knew that our life was the prize. We
took what care we could, and God the Lord did the rest, or rather He
did all—for His wisdom guided us, and His power baffled them.
Shortly thereafter, war was again declared by the Inland people
attacking our Harbour people. It was an old quarrel; and the war was
renewed and continued, long after the cause thereof had passed
away. Going amongst them every day, I did my utmost to stop
hostilities, setting the evils of war before them, and pleading with the
leading men to renounce it. Thereon arose a characteristic incident
of Island and Heathen life. One day I held a Service in the village
where morning after morning their Tribes assembled, and declared
that if they would believe in and follow the Jehovah God, He would
deliver them from all their enemies and lead them into a happy life.
There were present three Sacred Men, Chiefs, of whom the whole
population lived in terror,—brothers or cousins, heroes of traditional
feats, professors of sorcery, and claiming the power of life and death,
health and sickness, rain and drought, according to their will. On
hearing me, these three stood up and declared they did not believe in
Jehovah, nor did they need His help, for they had the power to kill
my life by Nahak (i.e., sorcery or witchcraft), if only they could get
possession of any piece of the fruit or food that I had eaten. This was
an essential condition of their black art; hence the peel of a banana
or an orange, and every broken scrap of food, is gathered up by the
Natives, lest it should fall into the hands of the Sacred Men, and be
used for Nahak. This superstition was the cause of most of the
bloodshed and terror upon Tanna; and being thus challenged, I
asked God’s help, and determined to strike a blow against it. A
woman was standing near with a bunch of native fruit in her hand,
like our plums, called quonquore. I asked her to be pleased to give
me some; and she, holding out a bunch, said,—
“Take freely what you will!”
Calling the attention of all the Assembly to what I was doing, I took
three fruits from the bunch, and taking a bite out of each, I gave
them one after another to the three Sacred Men, and deliberately
said in the hearing of all,—
“You have seen me eat of this fruit, you have seen me give the
remainder to your Sacred Men; they have said they can kill me by
Nahak, but I challenge them to do it if they can, without arrow or
spear, club or musket, for I deny that they have any power against
me or against any one by their Sorcery.”
The challenge was accepted; the Natives looked terror-struck at
the position in which I was placed! The ceremony of Nahak was
usually performed in secret,—the Tannese fleeing in dread, as
Europeans would from the touch of the plague; but I lingered and
eagerly watched their ritual. As the three Chiefs arose, and drew near
to one of the Sacred Trees, to begin their ceremonial, the Natives fled
in terror, crying,—
“Missi, away! Alas, Missi!”
But I held on at my post of observation. Amidst wavings and
incantations, they rolled up the pieces of the fruit from which I had
eaten, in certain leaves of this Sacred Tree into a shape like a waxen
candle; then they kindled a sacred fire near the root, and continued
their mutterings, gradually burning a little more and a little more of
the candle-shaped things, wheeling them round their heads, blowing
upon them with their breaths, waving them in the air, and glancing
wildly at me as if expecting my sudden destruction. Wondering
whether after all they did not believe their own lie, for they seemed to
be in dead earnest, I, more eager than ever to break the chains of
such vile superstition, urged them again and again, crying,—
 “Be quick! Stir up your Gods to help you! I am not killed yet; I am
perfectly well!”
At last they stood up and said,—
“We must delay till we have called all our Sacred Men. We will kill
Missi before his next Sabbath comes round. Let all watch, for he will
soon die and that without fail.”
I replied, “Very good! I challenge all your Priests to unite and kill
me by Sorcery or Nahak. If on Sabbath next I come again to your
village in health, you will all admit that your Gods have no power
over me, and that I am protected by the true and living Jehovah
God!”
For every day throughout the remainder of that week, the Conchs
were sounded, and over that side of the island all their Sacred Men
were at work trying to kill me by their arts. Now and again
messengers arrived from every quarter of the island, inquiring
anxiously after my health, and wondering if I was not feeling sick,
and great excitement prevailed amongst the poor deluded idolaters.
Sabbath dawned upon me peacefully, and I went to that village in
more than my usual health and strength. Large numbers assembled,
and when I appeared they looked at each other in terror, as if it could
not really be I, myself, still spared and well. Entering into the public
ground, I saluted them to this effect,—
“My love to you all, my friends! I have come again to talk to you
about the Jehovah God and His Worship.”
The three Sacred Men, on being asked, admitted that they had
tried to kill me by Nahak, but had failed; and on being questioned,
why they had failed, they gave the acute and subtle reply, that I also
was myself a Sacred Man, and that my God being the stronger had
protected me from their Gods. Addressing the multitude, I answered
thus,—
“Yea, truly; my Jehovah God is stronger than your Gods. He
protected me, and helped me; for He is the only living and true God,
the only God that can hear or answer any prayer from the children of
men. Your Gods cannot hear prayers, but my God can and will hear
and answer you, if you will give heart and life to Him, and love and
serve Him only. This is my God, and He is also your friend if you will
hear and follow His voice.”
 Having said this, I sat down on the trunk of a fallen tree, and
addressed them,—
“Come and sit down all around me, and I will talk to you about the
love and mercy of my God, and teach you how to worship and please
Him.”
Two of the Sacred Men then sat down, and all the people gathered
round and seated themselves very quietly. I tried to present to them
ideas of sin, and of salvation through Jesus Christ, as revealed to us
in the Holy Scriptures.
The third Sacred Man, the highest in rank, a man of great stature
and uncommon strength, had meantime gone off for his warrior’s
spear, and returned brandishing it in the air and poising it at me. I
said to the people,—
“Of course he can kill me with his spear, but he undertook to kill
me by Nahak or Sorcery, and promised not to use against me any
weapons of war; and if you let him kill me now, you will kill your
friend, one who lives among you and only tries to do you good, as you
all know so well. I know that if you kill me thus, my God will be angry
and will punish you.”
Thereon I seated myself calmly in the midst of the crowd, while he
leaped about in rage, scolding his brothers and all who were present
for listening to me. The other Sacred Men, however, took my side,
and, as many of the people also were friendly to me and stood closely
packed around me, he did not throw his spear. To allay the tumult
and obviate further bloodshed, I offered to leave with my Teachers at
once, and, in doing so, I ardently pled with them to live at peace.
Though we got safely home, that old Sacred Man seemed still to
hunger after my blood. For weeks thereafter, go where I would, he
would suddenly appear on the path behind me, poising in his right
hand that same Goliath spear. God only kept it from being thrown,
and I, using every lawful precaution, had all the same to attend to my
work, as if no enemy were there, leaving all other results in the hands
of Jesus. This whole incident did, doubtless, shake the prejudices of
many as to Sorcery; but few even of converted Natives ever get
entirely clear of the dread of Nahak.
If not truly converted, the two Priests were fast friends of mine
from that day, as also another leading man in the same district. They