Abstract
This article seeks to describe and analyze the failure of the first Christian mission in Western Polynesia. Applying Victor Turner’s model of social drama, we deal with the early confrontations on the Tonga islands in the years 1797–1801. A complex of overlapping and interdependent social dramas is identified between different social categories: missionaries and Tongans, missionaries and beachcombers, and beachcombers and Tongans respectively. Moreover, there is a social drama between the renegade missionary Vason, who “went native,” and the other missionaries. This paper also includes a Tongan point of view on these confrontations.
