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Preface

Anyone who has flown over or sailed the vast expanses of the Pacific Ocean must marvel that primitive man ever found and peopled the Pacific islands. How the early Pacific voyagers found Hawaii, Tahiti, Tonga, Samoa, New Zealand, and the thousands of other islands has only recently been understood. But who the ancient seafarers were, what their names were, and how they survived to establish homes and the peculiar cultures of the islands will never be more than partially understood.

Western man discovered the Polynesian Islands in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Not long after Europeans found Polynesia, sailors, settlers, and missionaries arrived. Western man had a powerful impact on the peoples of Polynesia. He introduced not only the Christian religion, education and literacy, modern agriculture and industry, and western government, but also disease, debauchery, more advanced weapons, and confusing cultural patterns. The Polynesians had to make thousands of changes before they could adjust to the requirements of the new world that were thrust upon them.

While this period of adjustment was most vigorously underway, missionaries of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints arrived in the Pacific. Although this book is not a general history of the interactions of western civilization with Polynesian cultures, I've attempted to include as many facts about the interactions of western, Polynesian, and Mormon cultures as possible. Until 1950 (and to some extent, since then), much of the history of the Latter-day Saints in Polynesia is cultural history as well as religious history. Readers will note far more references to cultural matters than they would expect in a history of the Church in Canada, Britain, or Germany.

When I was first planning this book, I considered a format that briefly narrated the story of the Church in the Pacific and then turned to a series of topical chapters on such subjects as building missionaries, missionary methods, temple building, inspiring tales, ocean adventures, education, and so on. Although such an approach has merit, I concluded that most readers would prefer an integrated approach. Also, I suspect that many readers will want to read a thorough history of only one island group, such as Hawaii or Tonga. Therefore, I have written essentially separate histories of each of the main areas. The final chapter recounts the latest developments in Fiji, Guam-Micronesia, and other non-Polynesian areas.

I developed an interest in Polynesia while serving in Hawaii as a missionary for the LDS Church. After joining the history faculty at Brigham Young University, I was invited by Leonard J. Arrington, then LDS Church Historian, and the Assistant Church Historians, James B. Allen and Davis Bitton, to prepare a single volume titled A History of the Latter-day Saints in Asia and the Pacific for a multi-volume series that was to commemorate the sesquicentennial of the Church in 1980. The series was later canceled, but Deseret Book expressed interest in and support for my efforts. As I continued to research and write, the original volume proved to be too long for a manageable single volume; hence this book and later another on the Church in Asia.