Erromango is the fourth largest island in the Vanuatu archipelago. With a land area of , it is the largest island in Tafea Province, the southernmost of Vanuatu's six administrative regions.
Name The endonym for Erromango in Erromangan is Nelocompne. There are several accounts of how 'Erromango' came into common usage: firstly, an oral history from the Potnarvin area tells of how Captain James Cook was given a yam during his visit in August 1774, and was told in the (now-extinct) Sorung language armai n'go, armai n'go ('this food is good'), and mistakenly assumed this to be the name of the island.
A second account is related by the naturalist Georg Forster, who accompanied Cook. He writes that, while visiting the neighbouring island of Tanna five days later, he learnt from a local named Fannòko that the word 'Irromanga' or 'Erramange' meant 'man'. Cook himself wrote later that he got the name, which he spells as 'Erromango', during discussions with people on Tanna, from which he also learnt the names of the surrounding islands such as Futuna and Annattom (Aneityum).
History
Lapita migration Erromango was first settled by humans around 3,000 years ago, as part of the Lapita migration out of south-east Asia into island Melanesia. The Lapita people brought with them domestic animals such as pigs and chickens and food plants such as yam and breadfruit.Walter & Lebot 2006, p. 118.
Two sites on Erromango, Ifo and Ponamla, have yielded significant archaeological evidence of habitation by Lapita and post-Lapita peoples, including pottery sherds, adzes, marine shell artifacts and cooking stones.
Erromango contains numerous caves that provided refuge from tribal warfare and cyclones. Human use of these caves has been dated to 2,800–2,400 years before the present. Some of the caves contain rock art and petroglyphs that have been identified with clan motifs and traditional stories. Caves were also used as burial sites.
British exploration and conflict James Cook was the first European to visit Erromango, landing near present-day Potnarvin in the north-east on 4 August 1774. Cook and his landing party were received with "great courtesy and politeness" by the local people, but when they insisted on hauling Cook's boat onto the shore, Cook took offence and fired his musket at one of the men. The shot misfired and a skirmish followed. Two of Cook's men were slightly injured and around four of the Erromangans were killed. Upon returning to his ship, Cook fired a four-pound cannon at the villagers. Following this incident, Cook gave the name 'Traitor's Head' to the peninsula adjacent to Potnarvin.Cook 1890, p. 503.
A painting of the conflict between Cook and the Erromangans entitled The Landing at Erramanga, one of the New Hebrides was later produced by William Hodges.
Whalers Whaling vessels were among the early regular visitors to the island on the nineteenth century. The first such vessel known to have visited was the Rose in 1804 and the last on record was the American vessel John & Winthrop in 1887.Langdon, Robert (1984) Where the whalers went: an index to the Pacific ports and islands visited by American whalers (and some other ships) in the 19th century, Canberra, Pacific Manuscripts Bureau, p.190.
The sandalwood trade In 1825, trader and adventurer Peter Dillon was informed of the island's large reserves of sandalwood (Santalum austrocaledonicum), valued in China for its aromatic oil and as a carving wood. Dillon found that his trade goods were not sufficient to entice Erromangans to cut the timber for him, but his crew were still able to load a substantial quantity of sandalwood. Dillon later told Samuel Pinder Henry (son of the pioneering Tahiti missionary, William Henry) of his discovery which brought other outsiders to Erromango to exploit the resource. This caused conflict between the Erromangans and the traders.Dillon, letter to the editor, Bengal Herkaru, 14 October 1826, cited in Dorothy Shineberg, They Came for Sandalwood, Ch. 2 Beginnings of the Trade, University of Queensland Press 1967.
In 1830, King Kamehameha III of Hawaii sent two ships with 479 Hawaiians on board to seize control of Erromango and its sandalwood, under the command of Boki, ruler-designate of Erromango. Their arrival in Cook's Bay coincided with the arrival of several other groups of traders intent on exploiting the sandalwood. Two ships, the Dhaule and the Sophia, both crewed by 330 Rotuman labourers and another ship, the Snapper, captained by Samuel Pinder Henry with a crew of 113 Tongan labourers on board, had all arrived just before the Hawaiian vessels.
One of the Hawaiian ships was accidentally blown up while anchored off Erromango, killing most of those on board including Boki. It appeared that the vessel's storage of gunpowder was inadvertently ignited. The Erromangans forcefully resisted the attempts of the remaining Hawaiians and the traders and their Polynesian crews to access their island. An introduced disease epidemic killed most of the Tongan and Hawaiian labourers as well as many of the local Erromangans. Only 20 Hawaiians were able to return to their homeland after their failed occupation. Despite the mortality, Samuel Henry's group was still able to extract up to four tonnes of cut sandalwood per day from Erromango. Nearly a hundred of his Tongan labourers died harvesting the wood which Henry was later able to sell for significant profit.Shineberg, 1967
A crash in the price of sandalwood shortly after deterred most traders until the mid-1840s, but even when prices rose again, the combined risks of attack on shore, uncharted reefs, storms and hurricanes meant that sandalwood trading was a highly speculative venture. Some traders such as Robert Towns and James Paddon established stations on Erromango or nearby islands such as Aneityum and Île des Pins in New Caledonia to reduce their costs. By 1865 though, Erromango's sandalwood resource was exhausted.Shineberg 1967, Ch. 11.
Introduced diseases and depopulation Erromango's population prior to European contact is estimated at 5,000, though some estimates are as high as 20,000. European visitors brought diseases such as influenza, smallpox and measles to which the local population had no immunity. Sixty percent of Erromangans died during a smallpox outbreak in 1853 and a measles epidemic in 1861.Carillo-Huffman & Nemban 2010, p.90.
Contemporary accounts by missionaries blamed the sandalwood traders for the outbreaks.Paton, John G., Missionary to the New Hebrides: An Autobiography (1889; reprint; Ross-shire, Great Britain: Christian Focus, 2009), pp. 111–114, 123. Erromangans sought reprisal by killing European and Polynesian missionaries such as George N. Gordon, their converts, and other visitors.Shineberg 1967, pp. 175–176.The last martyrs of Eromanga : being a memoir of the Rev. George N. Gordon and Ellen Catherine Powell, his wife by Gordon, James Douglas, 1863Paton, John G., Missionary to the New Hebrides: An Autobiography (1889; reprint; Ross-shire, Great Britain: Christian Focus, 2009), pp. 123–125.
The labour trade and blackbirding Between 1863 and 1906, around 40,000 people from what was then the New Hebrides were blackbirded onto ships to work as indentured labour on cotton and sugarcane plantations in Queensland, Australia. Another 10,000 went to work in nickel mines in New Caledonia and on plantations in Fiji, Samoa and Hawaii.Lighter & Naupa 2005, p. 41 Many of the islanders recruited were duped into taking part; some were coerced, and some volunteered. While some Erromangan names are listed in official records of Melanesian labourers in Queensland, no exact figures exist for the number of Erromangans who were blackbirded. However, 25 years after the White Australia Policy ended the Melanesian labour trade in 1906, Erromango's population had dwindled to just 381.Crowley 1997, p. 34.
Missionaries John Williams of the London Missionary Society and fellow missionary James Harris were killed and eaten by cannibals at Dillons Bay in November 1839.Paton, John G., Missionary to the New Hebrides: An Autobiography (1889; reprint; Ross-shire, Great Britain: Christian Focus, 2009), p. 56. In November 2009, after a lengthy collaboration between the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia, the Presbyterian church of Vanuatu and the Vanuatu Cultural Centre, Williams' descendants travelled to Erromango to reconcile with the descendants of those who killed their ancestor, the Uswo-Natgo clan, 170 years earlier.Naupa 2011, p. 98. To mark the occasion, Dillons Bay was renamed Williams Bay.
The Rev. George Nicol Gordon, of Prince Edward Island, Canada and his wife, Ellen Catherine Powell, missionaries from the Presbyterian Church of Nova Scotia to the New Hebrides, were killed at Dillons Bay on May 20, 1861. A memoir of the couple appeared in book form, at Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1863.
In total, six missionaries were killed on Erromango.Shineberg 1967, Ch. 16. An oral history from Unpogkor (Dillons Bay) says Rev. Williams was killed because he disrespected an important kastom ceremony that was taking place when he landed.Naupa 2011, p. 94. The Boy's Own Paper (1879) states that Rev. Williams and a Mr. Harris (identified as a man traveling to England to become a missionary) were killed because they arrived on the island shortly after an "outrage" was committed by the crew of another vessel. (The nature of this "outrage" is not stated in the article.) The pair, realizing their danger, died during a failed attempt to escape the island, being killed by natives on shore a few yards from their boat.
As Williams was the first Christian martyr in the south Pacific, Erromango became a particular focus for missionisation.Carillo-Huffman & Nemban 2010, p.101. Another missionary, Reverend McNair and his wife, were present on the island at Dillon's Bay until the former's death from illness in 1871. A Royal Navy captain visiting in 1869 described the conditions there as difficult, with scarce supplies of flour, clouds of mosquitoes, murderous threats from natives, and a "sweltering poisonous atmosphere, accompanied by fever and ague."
Canadian Presbyterian missionary H.A. Robertson, resident on Erromango from 1872 to 1913, succeeded in missionising the island's population. This changed the traditional society of the island. His attempts at missionisation were effective because he carefully studied the beliefs and material culture in order to target the most powerful symbols of traditional society. He collected many objects and sent them to overseas museums or used them as curios in his overseas fundraising tours to demonstrate the 'backwardness' of Erromangans.Carillo-Huffman & Nemban 2010, p.93.
In 1902, Robertson published Erromanga: the Martyr Isle, his description of his life as a missionary on the island. It was the first popular account of Erromango and its people. It promoted to a global audience the idea that Erromango was the 'Martyr's Island'.Carillo-Huffman & Nemban 2010, p.94.