IDNO

P.99958.VH

Description

Studio portrait of a manacled and shorn Kai Colo or Vitilevu highland convict - probably taken on the Ba Campaign of 1873. Note the marks left by pinioning cords or irons about his upper arms. He is being ridiculed by having the same sisi or vuasagale necklace as P.99957.VH strung round his neck.
Circa 1873-1874.
See P.87313.VH for further background. See also P.87301.VH, P.87337.VH, P.99956.VH, P.99957.VH. [Fergus Clunie, 14/7/2003]

Studio portrait of a “Kai Colo” or Vitilevu highlander, handcuffed, and with close cropped head, he being a prisoner-of-war taken by the Cakobau government, probably during the Ba Campaign of 1873. His slit and distended right ear lobe appears still to retain a saunidaliga or ear lobe ornament and, he is being ridiculed by having a sisi necklace or collar of sperm whale teeth about his neck. Otherwise he is wearing a black likusausauwai kilt over a malo loincloth.
[Atrocious treatment of prisoners-of-war, including sentencing they and their families to plantation labour, and even leasing them to Barnum’s Circus, was a feature of the settler-dominated Cakobau government of the early 1870s.] See P.99958.
Levuka, circa 1873. [Fergus Clunie, 26/7/2003, from record P.87313.VH, JD 27/12/2011]

Physical Condition: Print mounted onto card.

Place

Oceania Polynesia; Fiji; Ovalau Island; Levuka; Vitilevu Highland

Cultural Affliation

Kai Colo

Named Person

Photographer

Dufty Brothers, Levuka

Collector / Expedition

von Hügel, Anatole (Baron)

Date

circa 1873 - 1874

Collection Name

von Hügel Collection

Source

von Hügel, Anatole (Baron)

Format

Print Black & White Mounted

Primary Documentation

Other Information

P.99726.VH to P.100050.VH were in the belted folder now numbered C539/3/. This was formerly kept in paper archive Large Box G; VH1/4/5. It has now been transferred to the photo archive. The lists describing the contents of this box have been returned to the Paper Archive.

Photographer: This print was provisionally attributed to “?Dufty Brothers, Levuka”, but the related print with the same background, P.87301.VH, is published on the National Library of Australia website with the attribution to Francis Dufty. The Photographer and Place fields have been amended accordingly. [JD 9/3/2012]

This print has been catalogued with the support of the Getty Grant Fund. [A. Nadin, 10/10/2003]