Ethnobotany
of Tokelau: The Plants, Their Tokelau Names, and Their Uses*
Art Whistler
(1987). Economic Botany 42(2): 155-176.
Introduction
| The People | The Language | Flora
and Vegetation | References | Search
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INTRODUCTION
Tokelau
consists of three atolls lying about 300 miles (480 km) north of Samoa at a latitude
of 8-10º S and a longitude of 171-173º W. Swains Island, situated 100
miles (160 km) to the south at 11º S and 171º W, although politically
a part of American Samoa, is geographically and floristically a part of Tokelau.
In fact, most of the inhabitants of Swains Island (fewer than 2 dozen in number)
are Tokelauans. Because of these factors, and because of the ethnobotanical similarities
between Swains and Tokelau, all four islands are considered as a single unit in
this paper; Swains Island will henceforth be referred to by its Tokelauan name,
Olohega.
Tokelau is an incorporated territory of New Zealand, and its
inhabitants (about 1600) are citizens of that country. New Zealand is responsible
for Tokelau's external affairs, while internal affairs are handled by the Tokelauans
themselves from their office in Apia, Western Samoa. More Tokelauans (over 2500)
live in New Zealand than in Tokelau.
The three Tokelau islands are typical
atolls with a large central lagoon surrounded by an intermittent chain of sandy
islets known as motus. The largest of the atolls is Nukunonu, with a land area
of approximately 260 ha; the second largest is Faka'ofo, with 250 ha; and the
smallest is Atafu, with 205 ha (Balazs 1983). Olohega, with an area of about 210
ha, is not a typical atoll because instead of a central lagoon it has a landlocked
brackish water lake in the center.
The People
The people of Tokelau are Polynesians, with strong affinities to the atoll people
of Tuvalu to the west and the Northern Cooks to the east, and to the Samoans to
the south. In the oral traditions of the Tokelauans are accounts of an earlier
people who were driven from the islands by invaders (Macgregor 1937), but both
of these groups are Polynesian. Tokelau became known to the Western world when
it was first sighted by Lord Byron in the H. M. S. Dolphin in 1765, but it was
not until the mid-19th century that the European influence started to exert itself
with the arrival of Christian missionaries from the London Missionary Society
and the Roman Catholic Church. In the 1860s, the islands were depopulated by epidemics
that decimated the susceptible inhabitants, and by the "blackbirders"
who kidnapped Tokelau men to work in the phosphate mines of Peru. There is also
a noticeable Portuguese heritage in Tokelau, originating from a Portuguese ship
that was wrecked there in the 1870s. Nowadays, names like Pedro, Perez, and Periera
are common among the Tokelauans.
The Language
The
Tokelauan language is also typically Polynesian, and like the other Polynesian
languages, had no written form prior to the advent of the Europeans. It contains
five vowel sounds (written as a, e, i, o, and u), and ten consonants (written
as f, g [pronounced as an ng], h, k, l, m, n, p, t, and v). The f, however, is
pronounced like wh, and the h was formerly written as s (by Macgregor [1937] and
others). Additionally, a glottal stop (') marks where a letter has been lost from
the language. The pronunciation stress is usually on the penultimate syllable,
and when elsewhere, it has often been marked here with a dash above the stressed
vowel. Since Tokelau is now administered from the Office of Tokelau Affairs located
in Western Samoa, there has been a recent increase in cultural and linguistic
influence on the Tokelauans by Samoa. Most Tokelauans can also speak Samoan, since
their Bible, their sermons, and the radio broadcasts reaching the atolls are in
Samoan. This linguistic influence of Samoan is particularly strong in the names
of the plants, since many of the recently introduced species have entered Tokelau
along with their Samoan names.
Flora and Vegetation
Most of the motus of Tokelau and Olohega are covered with
dense groves of coconut palms. On some motus with less disturbance,
or in areas where coconut plantations have been neglected for
a long time, littoral forest dominates. The most common species
are Cordia
subcordata, Guettarda
speciosa, Hernandia
nymphaeifolia, and Pisonia
grandis. On the margins of the littoral forest, Pandanus
tectorius, and Tournefortia argentea prevail. In open scrubby
vegetation, the dominant species are Pemphis acidula and Scaevola
sericea. Within the shade of the forest, the dominant understory
plant is usually the bird's-nest fern, Asplenium nidus.
The flora of Tokelau consists of about 35 native species and about
48 weedy or naturalized species. Specimens were collected by me
on all three trips, and are in my personal collection deposited
at the Pacific
Tropical Botanical Garden (PTBG),
with duplicates of many of them at the Bishop
Museum (BISH),
Smithsonian (US),
and Berlin (B).
Almost all of the native species are or were utilized in some
way. Based upon how they are or were used, the plants can be divided
into several categories--food plants, timber plants, fiber plants,
ornamentals, medicinal plants, and miscellaneous. These categories
are non-exclusive because some species are important in more than
one of them. The main food plants are mostly root crops (predominantly
pulaka) and fruit trees (screwpine, breadfruit, bananas, coconut,
and papaya). Pulaka, a giant aroid, is cultivated in swampy pits
excavated in the center of the sandy motus. Timber plants (mainly
Calophyllum
inophyllum, Cordia
subcordata, Guettarda
speciosa, and screwpine) are used for house (fale) construction,
tool handles (like 'au toki, an adze handle), carved items such
as bowls (kumete and tanoa), watertight fishing boxes (tuluma),
drums (pahu), and gongs (pate), and for making plank canoes (vaka).
They are also commonly used as firewood.
The fiber plants, mainly coconut and pandanus, are used for weaving
mats (fala and moega), hats (pulou), fans (ili), baskets ('ato),
and formerly for men's loin cloths (malo) and women's skirts (titi,
forms of which are still used in dancing). Ornamentals are used
for decoration around houses and for leis (hei and fau). Numerous
plants are used medicinally, and a study of Tokelauan herbal medicine
is yet to be done. The miscellaneous category of plants includes
species used for dyes (like Morinda
citrifolia), soap (like Triumfetta
procumbens), and toys.
References
Amerson, A.B.,
Jr., W.A. Whistler, and T.D. Schwanner. 1982. Wildlife and wildlife habitat of
American Samoa. U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, Washington DC. 2 Vols.
Anonymous,
1974. Swains Island. Pacific Scientific Information Center, Honolulu. Mimeogr.
57 pp.
Balazs, G.H. 1983. Sea turtles and their traditional usage in Tokelau.
Atoll Res. Bull. 279: 1-30
Besnier, N. 1981. Tuvaluan lexicon. U.S. Peace
Corps, Funafuti, Tuvalu.
Burrows, W. 1923. Some notes and legends of a
south sea island. J. Polynes. Soc. 32: 143-173.
Hale, H. 1968. United States
Exploring Expedition: ethnography and philology. Gregg Press, Ridgewood, NJ. Originally
published in 1846. pp. 149-161.
Koch, G. 1983. The material culture of
Tuvalu. Inst. Pacific Studies, Suva, Fiji. New Series 3: Dept. of Oceania.
Macgregor,
G. 1937. Ethnology of Tokelau Islands. Bernice P. Bishop Mus. Bull. 146: 1-183.
Parham,
B.E.V. 1971. The vegetation of the Tokelau Islands with special reference to the
plants of Nukunonu Atoll. New Zealand J. Bot. 9:576-609.
Pickering, C.
1876. The geographical distribution of animals and plants in their wild state.
(From U.S. Explor. Exped. 19[2]:276-311). Naturalists' Agency, Salem, Mass.
Ranby,
P. 1980. A Nanumea lexicon. Pacific Linguistics, Series C-no. 65. Aust. Nat. Univ.,
Canberra.
Whistler, W.A. 1981. A naturalist in the South Pacific: north
to Tokelau. Pacific Trop. Bot. Gard. Bull. 11(2): 29-37.
Whistler, W.A.
1983. The flora and vegetation of Swains Island. Atoll Res. Bull. 262: 1-25.
Whistler,
W.A. 1984. Annotated list of Samoan plant names. Econ. Bot. 38:464-489.
Whistler,
W.A. 1987. The tree of life on coral islands. Pacific Trop. Bot. Gard. Bull. 17(1):
3-8.
Whistler, W.A. n.d. Ethnobotany of the Cook Islands: the plants,
their Maori names, and their uses. Allertonia (in press).
*
Reprinted with permission of the New York Botanical Garden Press.
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