Butaritari: Hawaiian missionaries

Category

Museums & Galleries Item

Item no

20199

Title

p. 6, Butaritari: Maka and Mary Maka, Kanoa and Mrs Maria Kanoa - Hawaiian missionaries of the American Board of Missions, Honolulu

Description

Two couples are photographed outside, in front of a table laden with books. The men are sitting, one holding on to a stick, with the women standing behind. The women both have dark, formal dresses on. Palm trees can be seen in the background as can two huts.

The image is from the photograph album entitled 'The Cruise of the Equator' of Robert Louis Stevenson's travels around the Gilbert Islands and Samoa in 1889.

Artist / maker

Unknown

Date

1889

Size

18 x 22.8 cm

Type

Photograph

Location

Writers' Museum

The photographer was either Joe Strong or Lloyd Osbourne and it was taken some time in July-August 1889.

The Stevensons took up residence within the compound of the Wightman Brothers, the owners of the Equator (the ship that the Stevensons had sailed on), staying at the home of Robert Maka, a Hawaiian missionary, and his wife Mary. Maka worked on Butaritari from 1865-1894, when he returned to Hawaii, dying on Oahu in 1907. The other missionary in the photograph, Kanoa, came to Abaiang in the Gilberts with the American Protestant missionary Hiram Bingham in 1857.

Butaritari is an atoll in the Pacific Ocean and is part of the island nation of Kiribati. Kiribati is made up of 32 atolls and includes the main island chain, the Gilbert Islands (of which Butaritari is part).

Born in Edinburgh on 13th November 1850, Robert Louis Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist, playwright and travel writer. Although he was plagued by ill health all his life, he was extraordinarily well-travelled, visiting Europe, America and the South Seas. He married American born Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne in 1880 and is best-known for works like Treasure Island (1883), Kidnapped and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (both 1886). From the late 1880s, Stevenson stayed in the South Pacific with his family on his own estate in Vailima in Samoa. He died here on the 3rd December 1894 of a brain haemorrhage at the age of 44, leaving what many consider his best work, Weir of Hermiston (1896) unfinished.

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Related subjects

Furnishings > Furniture > Chairs

People > Religion > Missionaries

Places > Oceania > Gilbert Islands

Plants > Trees > Palms

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