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Updated: June 27, 2025
Falling back into an attitude of lofty command, he exhorted the Typees to resist these encroachments; reminding them, with a fierce glance of exultation, that as yet the terror of their name had preserved them from attack; and with a scornful sneer, he sketched in ironical terms the wondrous intrepidity of the French, who, with five war-canoes and hundreds of men, had not dared to assail the naked warriors of their valley.
He called Anderson's attention to the shape of the point which had one good landing-place, a little sandy bay, and told him the story he heard from his people of a battle that was fought there with the Iroquois long, long ago. Four or five Iroquois war-canoes, filled with warriors, came to this place on a foray for scalps. Their canoes were drawn up on the beach at night.
Their long, lean war-canoes ravaged the coasts and visited vengeance for their forefathers upon the descendants of them that had persecuted and desired to eat.
The boats, though large, were not regular war-canoes; the men, instead of brandishing their spears, and lunging out with them over the edge in threatening attitudes, held them erect in their hands at rest, like standards; they were laughing and talking, not crying their war-cry.
In one battle that was fought between the people of Huahine and those of Raiatea immense slaughter took place. The fleet of one side consisted of ninety war-canoes, each about a hundred feet long, and filled with men. They met near a place called Hooroto, when a most obstinate and bloody engagement ensued.
They come here to build their big war-canoes; and as these take two, and sometimes four, years to build, there's always some o' the brown-skins among the black sarpents o' these islands." "By the way, Bill," said I, "your mentioning serpents reminds me that I have not seen a reptile of any kind since I came to this part of the world."
After the deck was cleared of these sanguinary savages, several guns were fired at the village, the sails were loosened, stream-cable cut, and the ship put to sea. The same night they got under weigh, seven large war-canoes hove in sight, with about thirty Indians in each.
One night, when all the town slept, he felt beneath her pillow and, finding the Mirror, he stole it and fled back with it to Rei, the chief of the white men. So it befell that, one day, as Gopani-Kufa was gazing up at the river from a window of the palace he again saw the war-canoes of the white men; and at the sight his spirit misgave him.
Now they were launching their war-canoes upon the lakes and rivers of the west, now engaged in bloody conflicts with the Catawbas and Cherokees of the south, now traversing regions of snow in pursuit of the Algonquins of the north, and anon spreading consternation and dread among the tribes at the remotest east.
Romata and he had had some differences, and high words had passed between them, during which the chief had threatened to send a fleet of his war-canoes, with a thousand men, to break up and burn the schooner; whereupon the captain smiled sarcastically, and, going up to the chief, gazed sternly in his face, while he said, "I have only to raise my little finger just now, and my big gun will blow your whole village to atoms in five minutes!"
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