The Exotic

By Hampton Sides

In The Exotic, Hampton Sides leads us on a grand adventure that is so strange and epic, it rivals the greatest tales of myth. Moving between a London high society newly infatuated with the Romantics and the perfumed archipelago of the Society Islands, Sides turns a riveting narrative into a cautionary tale about the heedless cruelty of colonialism and the collateral damage that can result from even the best-intentioned first contact.

—Peter Heller, bestselling author of The Dog Stars, The River, and The Guide

So much is made of “civilized"explorers heading out on grand adventures, but little is said of indigenes on their own journeys of exploration into the heart of whiteness. Sides gives us just that, in a meticulously researched story that is gripping, important, and inexplicably sad. A must-read.

—David Treuer, New York Times bestselling author of Rez Life and The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee

With The Exotic, Hampton Sides paints a superb portrait of a Polynesian Candide, whose picaresque travels to Europe and back in the Age of Enlightenment serve as a heartbreaking parable about human nature and colonialism.

— Julian Sancton, author of Madhouse at the End of the Earth: The Belgica’s Journey into the Dark Arctic Night

From the New York Times bestselling author of Ghost Soldiers, In the Kingdom of Ice, and On Desperate Ground, the story of the Polynesian man who became the toast of eighteenth-century English society and whose complicated fate foreshadowed the cultural and racial reckoning of today.

The story begins with a painting: A handsome young man with copper skin and regal posture gestures with a delicately tattooed hand. He is dressed in a turban and flowing robes and has the indisputable look of a prince from a foreign land. Painted in 1776 by Joshua Reynolds, the portrait is widely considered to be the artist’s masterpiece. But the man it depicts is a deception.

Since the 2001 release of his New York Times bestseller Ghost Soldiers, Hampton Sides has been celebrated for his ability to discover little-known stories that bring fresh perspective to momentous historical events. In the new Scribd Original The Exotic, Sides tells the story of a South Seas native who, in the 1770s, became the first Polynesian to set foot on British soil.

Having lost his home in an attack by invaders from Bora Bora, twenty-year-old Mai swore revenge. When Captain James Cook’s ships landed in Tahiti in 1774, during the renowned explorer’s second voyage, Mai saw his chance: He begged to be taken to England, where he hoped to amass the guns and ammunition with which he would return to Polynesia to destroy his enemies.

In England, Mai was feted as a “human pet”—an exotic creature from a wild place who provided high society with a source of entertainment and cultural study. But throughout his two years in England, he never lost sight of his goal: to return to his homeland and avenge his family. To that end, he agreeably played his part, living in pampered comfort and charming the British nobility, most notably King George III, who eventually agreed to fund Mai’s return voyage with a shipful of weaponry.

The Exotic follows Mai’s journey from Tahiti to England and back again, during which time he transformed into someone not quite Polynesian, not quite British. Mai represents the countless number of Indigenous people who lost their identities, if not their lives, as the result of their encounters with the Western world. His story raises questions with no easy answers: What is Mai’s legacy? How do we reinterpret the complicated role of an explorer-like Cook? How do people retain their heritage while also assimilating?

Both a cultural study and an entertaining historical yarn, The Exotic explores the ramifications of European exploration and colonialism that changed the world forever.

<

• Language: English
• Publisher: Everand Originals
• Release date: Sep 15, 2021
• ISBN: 9781094428864

Hampton Sides

Narrative historian Hampton Sides is the New York Times bestselling author of Ghost Soldiers, Blood and Thunder, Hellhound on His Trail, In the Kingdom of Ice, and On Desperate Ground. He is a contributing editor to Outside magazine and a frequent contributor to National Geographic and other publications. His work has been collected in numerous anthologies, and he is a two-time finalist for the National Magazine Award for feature writing. Hellhound on His Trail, about the murder of Martin Luther King Jr. and the hunt for his killer, was the basis for the acclaimed PBS documentary Roads to Memphis. Sides lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Book preview

Faraway Heaven

Tahitian War Galleys in Matavai Bay, by William Hodges, 1776.

Faraway Heaven

MAI WAS A NATIVE OF RAIATEA, a ragged volcanic island about 130 miles northwest of Tahiti. Raiatea is considered the Ur of Polynesia, the cradle of this extraordinary seafaring culture. It is believed to be one of the first places where ancient navigators, coming from the west, landed several millennia ago and developed their rich civilization, which reached its apogee at Taputapuatea, a complex of marae temples that served more or less as the Vatican City of the South Seas.

Taputapuatea was a sacred pilgrimage spot, the birthplace of Oro, the god of war and fertility. Priests from across Polynesia would hold elaborate ceremonies there, sometimes performing human sacrifices. It was also a gathering place where navigators would compare notes on their far-flung discoveries. Raiatea is said to be the island from which the first organized migrations embarked for Hawaii, New Zealand, and other then-uninhabited islands far across the Pacific. Raiatea was a power center and a hub, Christina Thompson, acclaimed author of the recently published Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesia, told me. "The cult of Oro there was disseminated to the other islands around Tahiti and beyond. Everything around the Taputapuatea marae was considered sacred—even the pass that led out through the reef to the open sea."

Today Raiatea, which means faraway heaven in the Tahitian language, still feels like a deeply spiritual place. In 2017 the Taputapuatea ruins were declared a UNESCO World Heritage site, and archaeologists have been working to both study and restore the marae. I visited there in early 2020, hoping to get some sense of Mai’s upbringing. Raiatea, the largest in the Society Islands’ leeward chain, is famous for its vanilla plantations and pearl farming. In the distance to the northwest, the great slab of Bora Bora’s Mount Otemanu hangs above the glossy blue sea. On Raiatea, there is a certain rare flower, the tiare apetahi, that grows only in one specific place, high along the volcanic slopes of Mount Temehani. Mysteriously, all attempts to transplant the flower to other islands, or even to other spots on Raiatea, have failed. The plant observes a definitive and delicate sense of place; it won’t take root anywhere else.

The same could be said for Mai. Raiatea was his home, and though he spent much of his life moving around the islands, and then traveling the world, he was never entirely at peace anywhere else.

Mai’s family owned land and enjoyed some measure of status on the island, and his early boyhood seems to have been happy. But then one day in about 1763, when Mai would have been ten or so, invaders from Bora Bora, under the command of the great chief Puni, came in their long canoes. After a three-year campaign, Puni succeeded in conquering Raiatea. His warriors killed Mai’s father and seized his family’s land. The Bora Borans ransacked much of the island and demolished the god houses at Taputapuatea, dismantling the platforms and other sacred structures. The impressionable Mai likely witnessed many traumatizing horrors. Though the Society Islands culture was typically peaceful, interisland warfare was characterized by brutal violence.

Often battles were fought just offshore. Warriors would lash two canoes together, bow to bow, and then fight with clubs, spears, and rocks until every last person in the losing vessel had been killed. If the battle occurred on land, the fighting was just as fierce. Warriors would usually fight to the death, and it was not uncommon for the victors to mutilate enemy corpses. They would sometimes rip away the chin of a dead foe, pulling out the jawbone as a trophy. Or they would flatten the eviscerated corpse with clubs, then cut a hole through the abdomen. The triumphant warrior would insert his head and wear his victim as a sort of macabre serape.

Today Bora Bora is known around the world as a destination for honeymooners, who find the place, with its thatched bungalows built in endless clusters over the turquoise lagoon, to be the very definition of romance. Author James Michener called it the most beautiful island on earth, but back in the 1700s Bora Bora had a reputation as a place where thieves, pirates, and other ne’er-do-wells holed up. Under Puni’s leadership, though, the island’s rabble of young men were organized into a nearly invincible

Reviews for The Exotic

[neilahunter · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Efficient boiling down of a story more fully told by others

[Alex Walia · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Hampton Sides wonderful story reading it , mostly a short story

[Chris Hammond · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Another Hampton Sides wonderful story. Can’t wait for the new Captain Cook book to be released.

[Ron Bloomberg · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

So fortunate to be living at a time when Hampton Sides is writing.
Loved this short story. If you haven’t read his books you have many gifts awaiting.
Pick up “Blood and Thunder “, “Hellhound on his Trail”, “Ghost Soldiers”, “On Desperate Ground”.
If Hampton wrote it...you should be reading it.

Ron Bloomberg

[Ed Roberson · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Excellent work, as always! Hampton Sides is the master of bring history to life in an engaging, fun style.

[Steve Crawford · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

It was an OK story, but I was looking for something more substantial (no in quantity as I knew this was a short story) but in substance.