1840 Fiji expedition

"Club Dance" being performed by around 100 Fijians, bearing a variety of clubs, while in the center of the gathering a Fijian "clown" performs, watched by American sailors, at Levuka village, surrounded by coconut palms and one banana palm, with tall hills in the background. The dance was held in honor of the United States Exploring Expedition on June 24th 1840. (Sketch made by Joseph Drayton)

The Fiji Expedition of 1840 was an exploring and surveying expedition, which itself was a part of the wider United States Exploring Expedition (a.k.a. the Wilkes expedition or the U.S. Ex. Ex.) that occurred from May 4 to August 11, 1840. It produced several scientific and cultural breakthroughs in realms such as cartography, oceanography, volcanology, anthropology, ethnography, ethnology, philology, linguistics, geology, taxonomy, trade, diplomacy, toponymy, epidemiology, pathology and Christian missionary work. It also was known for two separate punitive expeditions against separate groups of Fijians.

This page is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.