IDNO

P.98961.GCUM

Description

“Fiji Policemen at Nasova, Levuka”, 1875.
“The Guard at Government House. Native Constabulary. Major Knollys. Capt. Olive” [Gordon Cumming’s annotation, JD 6/1/2012]

Men of the Armed Native Constabulary stand at ease on the rara or square at Government House, Nasova, awaiting inspection by Captain Louis F. Knollys, the governor’s A.D.C. (in civilian suit) and Lieutenant Henry Olive, on secondment from the Royal Marines. Standing at attention beside them is Sergeant Tevita Madigibuli?.
Apart from Ratu Seru, the ovisa to the right of the front rank, who is distinguished by his tunic, the men wear their blue pullover jersey type shirts and white isulu, most of them with the serrated or “vandyked” edge designed by Lady Gordon and still part of the dress uniforms of the Fiji police and military forces today. They also wear broad white barkcloth waist sashes, some under, some over their cartridge belts. Some wear batinivuaka boar tusk pendants, and have the muscles of their legs above the knee braced by black vesasausauwai wrappings with trade beads strung to their fringes. Behind them is the “beehive” or conical roof of a centre-poled house of the distinctive western Vitilevu type house, indicating that some of the sotia (“soldiers”) came from there. [Fergus Clunie, 26/7/2003, from record P.4109.ACH1, JD 9/11/2011]

F.H. Dufty photograph of sotia of the Armed Native Constabulary standing at ease at the rara square at Government House, Nasova. They are awaiting inspection by Captain Louis Knollys, who is the ghostlike figure who has been painted out of the picture at far right, and Lieutenant Henry Olive, who has been clipped off the edge of the photograph altogether. See P.4109.ACH1 and P.87219.VH for an unexpurgated view.
1875, less likely 1876. [Fergus Clunie, 14/7/2003, from record P.99736.VH, JD 8/1/2012]

Place

Oceania Polynesia; Fiji; Ovalau Island; Near Levuka; Nasova

Cultural Affliation

Named Person

Lieutenant Henry Olive; Captain Louis F. Knollys; ?Sergeant Tevita Madigibuli; Ratu Seru

Photographer

Dufty, Francis Herbert (Dufty Brothers, Levuka)

Collector / Expedition

?Gordon Cumming, Constance Frederica

Date

1875

Collection Name

Gordon Cumming Collection

Source

Gordon Cumming, Constance Frederica

Format

Print Black & White

Primary Documentation

Other Information

P.98869.GCUM to P.99045.GCUM are in A.169.GCUM.

This album has been transferred from CUMMA’s Object Collections (original accession number Z 4152), into the Photographic Collections, and catalogued with the support of the Getty Grant Program One. [A. Nadin 16/10/2003]

CUMAA Exhibition: This print was displayed in Collected Sights. [Alex Nadin, 12/02/2003]

Publication: A copy of this print is published in ‘The Fiji Journals of Baron Anatole Von Hugel 1875 - 1877’, edited by Jane Roth and Steven Hooper (1990), plate 27b, page 138. [Alex Nadin, 12/02/2003]

Publication: A duplicate of this photograph is on the website ‘www.janeresture.com/fijihome/postcards.htm’. [Alex Nadin, 12/02/2003]