The Role of the Beachcombers in the Caroline Islands

Hezel, Francis X. (1978). "The Role of the Beachcombers in the Caroline Islands". In Gunson, Neil (ed.). The Changing Pacific. Kolonia, Pohnpei: Micronesian Seminar. pp. 261–272.

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Abstract: Beachcombers are a much reviled class of men. Contemptuously dismissed as 'reprobates' or 'abandoned and degenerate characters', they have time and again been charged with infecting the islanders with whom they lived with a moral pestilence ultimately more destructive than the epidemics of smallpox and influenza that ravaged these populations. Yet as H. E. Maude has pointed out in his masterful survey of beachcombers,(1) that motley array of deserters, escaped convicts, castaways and wanderers that gathered on many a Pacific island must be credited with more positive contributions as well--not the least of which was their interpretation of Western culture to the native populations that served to prepare them for changes still to come. Aside from such important general roles as cultural mediator, beachcombers have served more specific functions that have varied with time and place, as Professor Maude clearly shows. In this essay, I propose to explore the uses to which beachcombers were put on those few islands of the Caroline group where they were found in any numbers during the nineteenth century: Palau, Kusaie (Kosrae) and Ponape (Pohnpei). The prominence of beachcombers and the roles they assumed differed considerably even among these three islands, as will be seen.