A catalogue of the ethnographic items collected by the United States Exploring Expedition to the Pacific (1838-42) led by Commodore Charles Wilkes. The Expedition visited the Tuamotu Islands, Tahiti (in French Polynesia), Samoa, Tonga, Fiji, Lord Howe Island, Australia, New Zealand/Aotearoa, Gilbert Islands (Kiribati), Marshall Islands, and Hawaii. The catalogue was prepared in 1846 by Titian Ramsay Peale, an artist-naturalist with the Expedition. A typescript version, prepared by the PMB, follows the original document on the microfilm. See also the Bureau's newsletter, Pambu, October-December 1971:25, pp. 4-7 and PMB MS 89 and MS 146.
Henderson and Macfarlane Ltd., one of Aotearoa/New Zealand's best-known firms, was founded in Wellington (then called Port Nicholson) in 1840 by two Scottish immigrants, Thomas Henderson and John Macfarlane. The company exported timber, mainly kauri, and established its own shipping line. In the 1870's, the company became interested in the Pacific Islands trade and established a number of trading stations and coconut plantations. These were sold to Burns Philp, Lever Bros., and the Pacific Islands Company in the first years of the 20th century.
The unpublished history consists of 33 typewritten foolscap pages. It describes the establishment of the company, its Circular Saw Shipping Line and Pacific Island trade interests and mentions some well-known Pacific personalities such as Handley Bathurst Sterndale and 'Bully' Hayes; the 'siege' of the Suwarrow fort built by Sterndale and which he refused to leave after a difference of opinion with the company; Henry Mair's attempts to persuade Sterndale to leave and their subsequent 'smoking out' by Captain Fernandez of the schooner Kreimhilda who was sent to bring Sterndale back. Also mentioned is the 1890 Pacific cruise of Robert Louis Stevenson and his wife on the company iron-screw cargo boat Janet Nichol described in Mrs Stevenson's book published in 1915. The history takes the story of Henderson and Macfarlane down to the year 1902, by which time J.L. Young had entered the firm as a partner and the day of free and unrestricted trading in the Islands was ending. See also the Bureau's newsletter Pambu Oct. 1969:15 pp. 6-10.
These documents originally formed part of the archives of the Samoan District Committee and later Samoan District Council of the London Missionary Society, and were formerly held at Malua, Western Samoa. The Samoan District Committee was replaced by the Council in 1928.
Correspondence of the Samoan District of the London Missionary Society with the New Zealand Administration, Samoa.
