IDNO

P.87252.VH

Description

“Bau. Sketched by Miss Gordon-Cumming”.

Dufty photograph of a watercolour by Constance Frederika Gordon Cumming. Her note on the painting reads: “New Court House - Vale ni Veilewai, Mission Station on the hill. Bau. C.F. Gordon Cumming, May 1st 1877".
The “new courthouse” she is referring to dominates this action-packed scene to left of centre, being the high-roofed building standing on the stepped and stone-faced yavu or house the “tall house mound” of Navatanitawake, the burekalou or spirithouse of Ra Cagawalu or Komainayavucerecere, the great war god of Bau, and the courthouse has been built in the form of a spirithouse, with its high-pitched roof and long ridge-pole, the projecting ends of which are bound round with white bulidina cowries, themselves a symbol of spiritual or godly authority. The last surviving post of the spirithouse built atop the grave of Ratu Tanoa, Ratu Cakobau’s father, can be seen standing on top of the hill in the background, to right of centre. At right of centre, jutting out from behind the eaves of a thatched vale so only just visible, are the white walls of the stone church that was being built at that time, with just to the left of it the long roof of Naulunivuaka, the great Bauan burenisa or “strangers’ house” where outsiders were accommodated. Men wearing white barkcloth ivauvau headdresses and dressed in dancing costume can be seen practising a meke dance or action song brandishing big iirimasei fans, each made from a single leaf of the niumasei or fan palm, Pritchardia pacifica. To judge by the two men smoking at centre foreground a club dance is also in the offing, a totokia war club lying next to them. Women and girls carrying fishing nets edged by long stick handles are wandering about, while others are drawing water from a well to fill pottery saqa water jars. In the right hand distance two women are seated beating barkcloth at low dutua slab-anvils. [Fergus Clunie, 26/7/2003]

Place

Oceania Polynesia; Fiji; Near Viti Levu; Bau Island

Cultural Affliation

Named Person

Ratu Tanoa; Ratu Cakobau

Photographer

Gordon Cumming, Constance Frederica [Original Artist]; Dufty Brothers, Levuka (Dufty, Francis Herbert)

Collector / Expedition

von Hügel, Anatole (Baron)

Date

post 1 May 1877

Collection Name

Von Hugel Collection

Source

Format

Print Black & White

Primary Documentation

Other Information

P.87222.VH to P.87277.VH were found loose in the Museum’s paper archive envelope, VH1/4/7, which has now been re-numbered C512/.

Related Image: This print or negative appears to be a unique image within the MAA Photograph Collections. [JD 10/1/2012]

This print has been catalogued with the support of the Getty Grant Program One. [A Nadin, 2/7/2003]